


In Bed

by Ellipsical



Series: Guilty Secrets [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: !!!!!COMMUNICATION!!!!, Anal Fingering, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Autofellatio, Blow Job, Bravo - Freeform, Bravo John, Christmas, Christmas surprises, Co-showering, Cock kissing, Coming In Pants, Coming Out, Communication, Coping Mechanisms, Custom dildos?, Dildo blowjobs?, Dildos, Dirty Talk, Double Penetration, E-stim, Electric oral, Electrical Stimulation, Established Relationship, Flirting, Fluff, Good Intentions, Happy Ending, Heart to hearts with wiser older sisters, Internalized Homophobia, John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, Liminal Identities, M/M, Maybe supurfluous but, No longer liminal identities!!!, Oh John, PTSD John, Rimming, Self-Acceptance, Semi-Public Sex, Sex Toys, Sexual Fantasy, Somehow, Spitroasting, Texting, The one in which Sherlock's violin makes love to John, Therapy, These last few are out of order but I think need to be here, Vibrators, Violet Wand, Yes definitely that one, Yes that's all in the first chapter, also, and it's fall out, author has no regrets, cough, in truly Watsonian fashion, lots of dirty talk, manages to be envious of both himself and a dildo, oh god how do i tag this, oscillating vibrators, progress - Freeform, proposal, the Reichenbach fucking fall, um...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2018-11-30 10:15:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 46,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11461497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellipsical/pseuds/Ellipsical
Summary: The sequel toGuilty Secrets.How do the sons of silent, bitter houses love?Like this.A huge thank you to my extraordinary beta team,lawyer_margo,Violetwylde, andgirlwhowearsglasses. You are all amazing and your feedback was extremely helpful. This fic is better for all of you. All mistakes are my own.Also thank you to everyone on Tumblr who, long ago, offered up sex toy prompts for me. This is where they led.





	1. Chapter One

_It’s almost Christmas_ , John thinks, _and this, this is bullshit_.

“Please, John. Help me.” Wheedling. Draped over John while he scrubs at the pan in the sink. The muscles in John’s forearm stand out in stark relief as he works the scouring pad over the char, black flecks clinging to the backs of his hands, his wrists. Sweat springing up beneath his shirt. Sherlock’s humid breath, clinging to the back of his neck.

“Piss. Off.” John shrugs his shoulders to dislodge Sherlock from his limpet like hold, doing his best to ignore him as he ruts against John’s arse. “Go suck your own cock.”

Sherlock grunts and with one last purposeful roll of his hips, he’s gone. John’s back prickles as the air streams over him.

Sherlock’s being an impossible git. Has been all day. This morning: sawing away at his violin until he had woken John up to put the coffee on to perk. Shouting abuse at Lestrade on his mobile for twenty-six minutes. Being short with Mrs. Hudson when she had stopped by to drop off the post. After lunch he had been bouncing off the walls, pacing the living room rug while it rained and rained outside. A monsoon in December and John was trapped, irritation building and building as the day wore on.

Sherlock hadn’t eaten two bites of the Bolognese John had made for their dinner before he’d fucked off to the shower when it was his turn to do the washing up. And when he’d come out, smelling delicious and clean and soft, he had then started humping John from behind like an addlepated poodle, whinging for a blow job.

John seethes, his teeth set into his bottom lip, as he scrapes futilely away at the pan. A litany consisting mainly of: _Bloody arsehole. Acts like a child when he’s bored, the insufferable twat_ , running through his mind on loop. He finally gives up and sets the pan to soak, peeling off the yellow gloves and draping them over the draining board to dry.

The rain persists, filling the kitchen with it’s quiet whooshing against the windowpanes.

 _Quiet_.

It’s finally blissfully quiet in their flat.

No violin. No high pitched screeching. No slap of bare feet wearing a hole in their sitting room rug.

John closes his eyes and breathes into the silence. He rolls his shoulders and his head on his neck, trying to release some of the tension that had built up over the course of the day. He breathes and breathes the cool air.

He fills the kettle, his thoughts wandering. A cuppa, a book, a bath, and then bed. And hopefully, whenever Sherlock returns home from wherever he’s buggered off to, he’ll have worked the manic energy off.

When the kettle clicks off John steeps his tea, adds a splash of milk, and is heading for his chair, when a soft moan draws his attention to the sofa.

He’s lucky he doesn’t drop his mug.

Considering the sight that greets him, he’s lucky he doesn’t have a heart attack.

Or burst spontaneously into flames.

Jesus.

Fucking.

Christ.

He knew Sherlock was flexible, but this is just ludicrous.

John sets his mug down on the table beside his chair and puts his hands on his hips, alternating between furious and amused and, grudgingly, impressed.

Two blue eyes, drowsy and dark, meet John’s from across the coffee table.

“You look absolutely ridiculous,” John says, folding his arms across his chest and resolutely ignoring the way his prick is swelling against the fly of his jeans.

Sherlock hums, but it’s muffled.

Muffled by the cock in his mouth.

His cock.

Sherlock’s cock.

Sherlock has his own cock in his mouth.

He is bent in half, feet hooked over the sofa’s armrest, providing leverage, as he rocks himself in and out of his own lips.

Those eyes, peering out at John from underneath his thigh, slip shut in what looks like utter ecstasy. John, who knows all too well what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that exquisitely talented mouth, can feel the deep moan it elicits from Sherlock reverberate under his own skin. John swallows, tongue thick in his dry, dry mouth.

That’s about the time that he notices the pink vibrator buzzing happily away an inch or two below the main spectacle.

 _Fuck me_ , John thinks, because, how? How is he supposed to remain aloof and unaffected when Sherlock is fucking his own mouth with a vibrator shoved up his arse?

John walks across the room, skirting the coffee table, to stand between Sherlock’s feet.

Fucking hell.

John’s eyes are level with Sherlock’s arse. There is a low drone filling the air as John watches Sherlock clench. His rim, stretched out around the vibrator, pulsing dark and shiny with lube, contracts, his body trying to pull it deeper. John glances down, between Sherlock’s spread knees, just as Sherlock licks out, teasing at the slit of his cock to gather a pearlescent bead of precome, and John, involuntarily, licks his lips.

Now that John’s closer he can see that Sherlock’s in a fair bit of a bind. He can really only get the crown in his mouth and even then it keeps slipping out to smack him on the chin.

John grins. “I should leave you like this,” he says, wrapping his hands around Sherlock’s ankles, thumbs stroking lightly over the cool skin, before dipping down to trace up the graceful arches of his long feet. “You’ve been a bastard all day,” John says softly, as Sherlock sucks ineffectually at the head of his cock. John drifts his hands higher, over the crinkly hair on the backs of Sherlock’s calves, into the crooks of his knees, and up the trembling planes of his thighs to where his hands are gripping his hips.

John rubs his fingertips between Sherlock’s knuckles, down between his fingers, before stroking back, over his palms, and down his arms. Murmurs, “I should leave you to it. Let you get frustrated because you can’t get deep enough. Can’t slide down and take it deep like you want, can you? Can’t feel yourself leaking, hot and thick, down your throat.” John drags his palms up the outside of Sherlock’s thighs to cup Sherlock’s round cheeks and pry them wider, thumbs dipping in to tease around where Sherlock’s pulled taut and open.

His skin gleams, glossy and wet and _throbbing_ , as John presses his thumbs in,

and,

                                _in_.

Sherlock whines around the plump cocktip in his mouth, his cheeks stained crimson, his lips slick and lush and a deep deep pink.

John should leave him to it.

It’s nothing more than what Sherlock deserves after the day he has put John through.

But…

The vibrator shudders against John’s thumbs as he tips Sherlock slightly towards him, sinking his prick deeper, where Sherlock needs it, wants it, absolutely doesn’t deserve it.

Sherlock groans in appreciation, hollowing his cheeks around himself, his lips stretching out to accommodate the wider girth as his cock swells towards it root. His eyes are wide, black with pupil, and absolutely desperate. It sends a hot pulse sluicing through John. His cock jerks in response, leaving a sticky spot on his pants.

“You want my help?” he asks, taking hold of the vibrator and fucking it in and out of Sherlock’s soft, swollen hole. “Like this?” Letting the low purring throb of it brush over Sherlock’s prostate, once, twice, before withdrawing it. Sherlock shakes his head and his prick slips out, smearing saliva over his chin.

“ _Please_ ,” he gasps.

“All right,” John says, dragging his eyes back up to where he’s working the vibrator in and out of Sherlock’s body. Letting it slip free, Sherlock’s hole flutters, _squeezing_ at the air before slowly, slowly, closing up. John leans in, lets his words feather themselves against Sherlock’s sensitive skin, “Maybe I should clean you up,” before licking a long, wet stripe right over the hot, sticky rim of him. John rocks him forward onto his tongue, tasting: strawberry flavoured lube—that manipulative git knew John would do this, God, _fuck him_ —and simultaneously feeding Sherlock more inches of his cock.

John fucks him with the tip of his tongue, shoves into the warm silky space as deep as he can get. Works it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until Sherlock’s body is loosening around him, opening up, blood hot and satiny smooth. John pulls out and licks him. Pushing the broad muscle of his tongue up and down, getting him soaking, messy and blushing pink.

John bends his knees and kisses down, sucking a bit on Sherlock’s salty, scratchy balls, before sliding his open mouth down the underside of Sherlock’s cock to lick at where Sherlock’s sucking himself off. John kisses at Sherlock’s upper lip, tasting salt and musk, until Sherlock moans and shudders, shudders and moans, and then John moves back up the way he came. Worrying the blue ridge of Sherlock’s dorsal vein with his tongue before returning to lap at Sherlock’s hole.

One thumb pressed snugly underneath Sherlock’s bollocks, pressing good and hard, rubbing his prostrate, John rocks Sherlock forward, as far as he can go, his cock half sheathed inside his mouth.

The look in Sherlock’s eyes is frantic and John can tell he’s close. Can feel it in the shivering tension of Sherlock’s thigh beneath his palm.

John can commiserate. His blood is hammering an urgent path through his body as he raises his hands, takes two generous handfuls of Sherlock’s beautiful, soft, luscious arse, spreads him open, and then buries his tongue inside Sherlock’s body once more.

The effect is instantaneous, Sherlock tenses and comes.

John licks him through it and only stops when Sherlock starts to lower his hips back down to the sofa cushions.

“Roll over,” John says, his hands immediately tugging on his zip, pulling himself out, hard and aching, with the taste of Sherlock’s sweet musky skin still smeared all over the inside of his mouth. Sherlock, boneless and dreamy eyed, complies, rolling over onto his stomach. “Open your mouth,” John says, one hand wrapped around his prick and one gripping soft curls.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathes out hard as Sherlock parts his lips and John slides inside.

“You want some more?” John is panting. He doesn’t care. He feels as if he is about to explode. He watches as he glides in and out of Sherlock’s mouth, the corners red and raw, stretched out from his own cock. “Yeah?” Sherlock nods and makes a needy noise in the back of his throat as if that’s just what he wants.

For John to sink his cock deep, where Sherlock couldn’t reach himself. For John to fuck his throat and feed him another load.

So, John does. Slides forward into tight wet suction and spills and spills as Sherlock swallows around him, drinking it all down.

He almost collapses on top of Sherlock, it’s a near thing, but somehow he manages to slide down onto the couch instead, Sherlock lifting his head up until John settles beneath him, before laying it down in John’s lap, the tip of his nose nuzzling infuriatingly at John’s softening wet prick.

John, giggling, oversensitive, pushes him away and does up his zip.

Sherlock turns on his side, still gloriously naked and flushed pink from his orgasm, slides his arms around John’s waist, and rubs his face against John’s stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, the warmth of his breath seeping through John’s shirt and vest to melt against his skin.

John, feeling infinitely more inclined to forgive him in his post-ecstatic state, which, he supposes, was probably Sherlock’s intention, winds one hand up gently in Sherlock’s curls and rests one hand on the soft pale skin of his hip, thumbing over the constellation of freckles scattered there, and resigns himself (for the hundred thousandth time) to being hopelessly in love with a man who finds existence tedious at best and completely intolerable at worst.

“All right,” John says with a rueful sort of ache in is chest, petting him: soft skin, soft hair.

 

**********

 

John’s still sort of, not really, but, yes, actually, definitely is, thinking about it two days later as he and Sherlock are making their way through Mayfair, having just come from Harrods in Knightsbridge and a curiosity shop in Piccadilly, and are heading for Oxford Circus, the Underground, and home. People push around them, grunting and swearing under their breaths at their slow pace, heads turned down against the cold.

The thoughts are diffuse, scraps of things that are just out of focus. John knows, for instance, that Sherlock requires stimulation. He knows that two days ago they had been without a case for two weeks too long and that Sherlock was grasping at straws. Needing something, anything, for his mind to hone in on before it turned inward and Sherlock started tearing himself, and everyone around him, apart.

When John asks about it, couching it in simple curiosity over the, um, _auto-fellatio_ , Sherlock, his eyes bright above his blue scarf, with twinkling Christmas lights winking off the high gloss of his curls, his hands full of shopping bags, says, “I used to live just over there,” nodding his head in the general direction of the British Museum, John thinks. “Montague Street,” Sherlock confirms a moment later. “Mycroft had me transferred to University of London when I…” Sherlock glances at John and John nods, to say he understands, because he is aware of Sherlock’s past, but Sherlock pushes it out anyway, in a rush, “When I overdosed for the second time as I was getting my doctorate at Oxford,” and John swallows around the raw December air, helpless. Sherlock clears his throat.

“I’m an addict,” he says next, making John wish he hadn’t asked. Making him wish he could take it back. “But after that spot of trouble, I stayed clean, until. Well.” Until Reichenbach he means. His cheeks grow red when he says, “Mostly through socially acceptable addictions like cigarettes and coffee and procuring a police scanner that I then used to irritate Lestrade with my presence at crime scenes to no end.”

John huffs out a laugh, because that’s what the situation seems to call for: relief of some kind.

He doesn’t feel relieved. He feels as if he is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Sherlock’s eyes flicker back down from where they’ve been fixed on the horizon, on the past, and meets John’s gaze.

“Masturbating helped relieve…tension,” Sherlock says carefully, as if he is considering his words and trying to pick the right ones. John smiles, kindly, says, “Yeah, I bet it did,” but Sherlock shakes his head as if John isn’t understanding.

He taps a gloved fingertip against his temple. “It quieted things. Especially when…when I was overwhelmed with the need to use. I went to some lengths experimenting.”

And it seems obvious to John, once Sherlock states it clearly like that, because of course he did. He’s Sherlock. He would have tried out every which way to wring sensation from his body that he could. He would have exhausted all possibilities. Made a spread sheet. He would have left no stone unturned.

The realization leaves John reeling a bit, because compared to the length and breadth of the sexual knowledge that Sherlock Holmes would have accrued over two decades of rigorous and methodical wanking, what the bloody hell does John have to offer in it’s place?

Sherlock sees, what must be the vaguely startled and bewildered and possibly gutted look on John’s face, and guides him out of the rushing stream of last minute shoppers and up against the side of a building in a small alleyway.

“What is it?” Sherlock asks, sounding genuinely confused.

John thinks of that morning. Of Sherlock thrusting lazily into John’s mouth, the soft, spongy pads of his toes kneading at John’s ribs, his slim white thighs trembling as John had opened up and let Sherlock slip him every thick inch until his jaw had ached and his lips had burned from the stretch, but the sound of Sherlock’s hoarse moans and the broken way he had cried out when he came, the tight channel of John’s throat milking every last drop, it had been worth the discomfort. It had been worth it when Sherlock had rolled over onto his side, a languid splash of limbs, his eyes sleepy slits of blue over his shoulder, the way he had pulled John against him and pressed back so that John could glide between Sherlock’s sweat slick cheeks and come all over his back…

It’s true they hadn’t spoken much the rest of the day. Sherlock was absorbed in a chemical process and John had ducked out to drop off the dry cleaning and to buy toiletries and do the weekly shop at Sainsbury’s. Sherlock had perked up when John had opened the package of Viennese whirls he’d decided to indulge in and had happily sucked the jammy crumbs from John’s fingertips while straddling his lap and drinking his tea between bites that left John’s jumper a disaster, and his hair sticky where Sherlock had been mussing it, and his lips wet and slightly throbbing. He’d had to change before they left for their annual Christmas binge. Gifts for Mrs.Hudson, Lestrade, Molly, Harry, and Mycroft were all accounted for and they were heading back to the flat for take-away.

It was lovely and sweet and hot and perfect and John’s getting hard again just thinking about Sherlock’s slippery crack and how his arse had felt squeezed around his cock, but what if Sherlock doesn’t feel the same way?

John takes a deep breath. Christ. “Sherlock.” Best to just get it over with. Come on then. “Are you bored with us?”

Sherlock scrunches up his nose and gives John his best, You’re An Idiot™, look and something inside John unclenches.

Just a little.

“I like it, you know,” John says slowly. Now, he’s the one choosing his words. “I like… _playing_. I know we haven’t, not really since the time in the car, but…if you want to do it more often, I wouldn’t object.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows are arching towards his hairline as he rocks back on his heels, studying John with all the attention he normally reserves for murder suspects or corpses. John chews the inside of his cheek, a nervous buzz in his stomach.

“I feel like,” John goes on, blood thudding in his cheeks, thinking, this morning, while he had been sucking Sherlock off slow and sweet and utterly in earnest, he’d felt slightly off- balance, like he hadn’t felt since he was a kid, inexperienced and insufficient, like he was competing with Sherlock himself for title of best blow-job and that that didn’t seem particularly fair, “like maybe,” _fuckfuckfuck_ , “you might need… _more_.”

Bitten back at the last: more than _me_.  
  
“Can I take you somewhere?” Sherlock suggests after a moment of intense scrutiny that John weathers as best as he can, which, he suspects, is pretty fucking poorly, considering he’s pants at concealing anything from Sherlock. Leaning in, Sherlock adds, “It can be our Christmas present to each other,” before he bends and kisses John, soft soft soft.

He tastes sweet. Of posh biscuits and warm sugary tea before they had headed out into the last minute holiday crush.

John loves him like this. The cold nuzzle of his nose. The fairy lights in his hair. Oblivious to the world around them as the crowd streams by where they’re tucked away inside the alley. The way his lips are curled up at the corners as John kisses him back, soft soft soft.

“Ok,” John says, a little bit later, feigning nonchalance by shrugging, but feeling slightly wary, because, lets be honest, it’s Sherlock, and if it’s something kinky by his standards…

“You know you didn’t actually answer my question,” John says, as Sherlock kisses him again and again.

And again.

Sherlock hums and presses closer, bags rustling in his hands at John’s sides. “That’s because it was a stupid question,” murmured against John’s lips before he’s turning and hailing a cab.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a call back to something mentioned briefly in Guilty Secrets which many of you might not remember in this chapter. There will be a link to the chapter in the end notes if you would like to refresh your memory :).
> 
> Content Warning: There is mention of suicidal thoughts and past drug use in this chapter. If you would like to skip this, stop reading at the part where John takes Sherlock's hand in his lap.
> 
> A huge thank you to my extraordinary beta team, [lawyer_margo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lawyer_margo/pseuds/lawyer_margo), [Violetwylde](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Violetwylde/pseuds/Violetwylde), and [girlwhowearsglasses](http://archiveofourown.org/users/girlwhowearsglasses). This fic is better for all of you and I love you all dearly. All mistakes are my own.

They continue on in the direction they were heading, past Soho and into Holborn. The building that they pull up to is a nondescript strip of terraced flats on Bloomsbury Square. The portico is painted white with a black door and a shiny brass knocker, almost identical to Baker Street.

Sherlock bounds up the short flight of stairs and is pressing his gloved finger to the bell when John catches up. There is a small plaque that reads, _Au Lit_ , with, _By Invitation Only_ , scrawled beneath.

“In bed?” John translates slowly, using his rudimentary French. “Do we have an invitation?”

“Don’t need one,” Sherlock says. “I’ve been a member here since I was 24.”

The door swings open to reveal a tall, thin, Asian person of indeterminate gender, dressed in a neon blue houndstooth suit, tailored within an inch of it’s life, and practically painted on their body, electric fuschia brogues on their feet.

“Alex,” Sherlock says, leaning forward to reciprocate two kisses on the woman’s/man’s cheeks. ( _What’s it to you?_ , he can hear Harry snipe inside his mind) They wear no makeup and their black hair is artfully disheveled, one side shaved, the other swept back from their brow, the tips frosted white. They smell of expensive perfume, like leather and lilies, and their lacquered nails, painted ebony and cut short, gleam wetly in the bright light.

“Sherlock,” they say, smiling warmly and stepping aside to let Sherlock and John into the foyer. John tries not to look too taken aback at the uncharacteristically friendly interchange, but Sherlock catches him at it anyway. He furrows his brow at John, but John shakes his head, rubbing his fingertips over his lips to hide his smile.

It’s a small space with doors leading off it to either side of a large, white marble reception desk. Everything is white, in fact. The walls are bare but for the name, _Au Lit_ , hung in wrought iron script on the wall behind the desk. The chandelier above them is white as well. Some kind of avant garde art piece in it’s own right and dripping crystals. Rainbows shimmer along the ceiling’s edge.

“It’s been some time since we last saw you.”

“Mmm, yes, it has. I was away for some time, and then…” Sherlock eyes slide meaningfully down to John and the person smiles. Says, “ _Ah_ , I see. Will you be needing one of the rooms?”

“Actually, I’d like to show him the shop if it’s possible.”

“Of course. I’ll have Armand take you back in just a moment.”

Sherlock thanks them and turns back to John as a call is placed behind the desk in discreet whispered tones.

“Have you ever heard of a Molly house?”

John folds his arms behind his back, looking up at him. “Like, Mother Clap and all that?”

Sherlock looks impressed. “Exactly. Her coffee house, which catered to homosexual men, was near here.”

John nods, takes it in stride.

“ _Au Lit_ is similar in concept. It’s a place where queer people can go to be among their own kind. There is a sex shop on the bottom level, a bar on the second, and rooms for let on the third and fourth.”

“But, 'by invitation only'. Not exactly for everyone is it?” John points out.

“Yes, it does try to screen its members before allowing entrance for the safety and privacy of all involved. There is also a small fee to belong here. It’s not exorbitant and there is some financial aid, but it does exclude certain classes, you’re quite right. They do good work in the community though. Giving money where they can and sponsoring events and advocacy efforts.”

“So, it’s a poncy pleasure club?”

Sherlock’s mouth curves up. “How eloquent.”

John snorts. “Why’re _we_ here then? You don’t want to use one of the rooms, so…”

“This is where I would come,” Sherlock says. “Before.”

“To meet people?”

Sherlock shakes his head. Scrunches up his nose. “No, I’ve told you. The majority of people are too dull. Too stupid. I didn’t come here for relationships. I came here because they could give me what I needed.”

“And what was that?”

“Novelty.”

“Novelty.”

“Yes, John, _novelty_.”

Just then the door on their left swings open and a heavily tattooed man in a fitted white shirt, a pony tail, and a beard, steps through, motioning for them to enter.

“Sherlock,” the man says in subtlety accented English, smiling fondly. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Armand,” Sherlock says, his hand in the small of John’s back, urging him through the doorway and into a brightly lit corridor.

“I’ve never seen you quite so polite,” John murmurs as they follow the Frenchman down the hallway towards a door at the opposite end. There are framed photographs on the wall of naked bodies in snapshot. Tastefully erotic. Suggestive. A titillation of flesh.

“I have to be on my best behaviour here,” Sherlock admits, the corner of his mouth curling up. “Or else they’ll kick me out.”

John laughs softly under his breath as they’re led through into a large room, white and softly lit like the first. The walls are lined with shelves, with tables laid out throughout, covered in glass with their wares presented beneath. There are padded benches scattered here and there where one could sit and peruse the merchandise.

“Would you care for anything to drink? Water? Tea? A scotch, perhaps?” Armand asks as they come to a stop in the centre.

“No, thank you,” Sherlock says. “I think for now we’d just like to look around.”

Armand inclines his head. “Please let me know if I can be of service.”

“I can see what you meant by novelty,” John says softly, spinning slowly around to take in the room and the incredible number of sex toys it holds.

Sherlock grins. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with half of these things.”

“Well, yes, that’s the point,” Sherlock says, and John shoots him a look from beneath his brows as he steps up to the table closest to him and sets his fingertips to the glass.

“So this is to be our Christmas present to each other then?” John asks, letting his eyes roam over the rainbow of dildos lying on velvet padding below him. A small note card lies next to each one, extolling it’s virtues.

“There are six days until Christmas Eve,” Sherlock says, nodding his head. “I propose we each pick out three things we’d like to try.”

John glances up at him and sees that he’s blushing. Two red splotches scalded high on his cheeks. _He’s nervous_ , John realizes with a jolt. _The great bloody idiot_. John slips his hand beneath the Belstaff and sets it on Sherlock’s hip. Saying low, “I think it sounds like a great idea.”

“You do?” Sherlock’s eyes flick back and forth between John’s, still uncertain.

“Yeah.” John rocks up onto his toes and Sherlock bends to meet him.

The hair at the nape of his neck slips through John’s fingers, silky soft. The slight stubble around his mouth scratching against John’s lips, sending tiny sparks skittering across his skin.

“Is it meant to be a surprise?” John asks, a few moments later, when Sherlock is flushed for an entirely different reason.

“I suppose we could try,” Sherlock says, and John squeezes his hand around Sherlock’s hip before stepping away.

“Ground rules?”

“Such as?”

“Um, well, for me…” John lets his eyes drift around. “No pain stuff.”

Sherlock nods. “All right.”

“And I don’t fancy being tied up.”

“What about tying me up?”

John cocks his head, considering.

“That’s fine.”

“Anything else?”

“Don’t think so, but I’m also not familiar with most of the things in this room so I reserve the right to change my mind.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”

“What about you?”

Sherlock shrugs and shakes his head.

“Nothing?” John says.

“Nope.”

Christ.

“Alllll right. No peeking.”

“The prostate stimulation and anal play section is just over there,” Sherlock says airily over his shoulder as he saunters off in the opposite direction.

“Bastard,” John says, but he’s smiling isn’t he?

John turns and squares his shoulders at the wall in front of him.

Shelf upon shelf of vibrators stare back at him.

The back of John’s neck prickles. His cheeks grow hot. Sweat collects, clammy, in the small of his back. He is transported back to that moment in his bedroom as he held the drumstick in his hand.

Somehow that moment had led him here.

To a pleasure house for LGBTQ+ people.

A people he now belonged to.

John shifts, digging his toes into the soles of his shoes.

He’s been trying terribly hard to absorb the change in his identity over the last three months. For the most part it has gone swimmingly. He has had zero trouble introducing Sherlock as his boyfriend. He has had zero trouble imagining himself spending the rest of his life with Sherlock and has had zero trouble buggering Sherlock senseless over every surface in their flat. But just last month, when he and Greg had met at the pub for pints, when Greg had asked if John was gay now…John hadn’t known what to say. He’d eventually said that he was bisexual. It’s true, he supposes. But even that doesn’t seem to fit correctly.

He stares at the flesh coloured, thickly veined, vibrating monstrosity directly across from him and feels hopelessly out of place.

Like an imposter.

A fraud.

Is he queer enough to be here?

He hasn’t suffered for this. Hasn’t marched in any parades or been discriminated against. Sure, he’s weathered the disapproving glares of people on the street on occasion, but that wasn’t anything, was it? John isn’t seeking refuge. How many times has he been lectured by Harry over the years about his straight, white, male privilege? If anything, based on his gender and race, he benefits from not using these types of services. Best to leave them for people who really needed them.

Like…

Sherlock.

John turned around and watched as Sherlock chatted politely with Armand in perfect French, flashing him his sunniest, fakest smile, before being led behind the counter and through a door marked Private.

Sherlock said that it was a place where he could go to be amongst his own kind. And for a kid like Sherlock, trying not to succumb to the urge to use drugs, who was different in every sense of the word, this had been a safe place for him to go. To channel his energy. To find an outlet for his brain. For novelty.

And bloody hell, was there ever novelty here.

John meets the eye of the flesh coloured dildo. He supposes that he could take it as an insult. They’ve only been shagging for three months, after all. But he isn’t insulted. He knows now that it’s about self-preservation with Sherlock, and an innate, insatiable curiosity. A desire to experience and catalogue and dissect and investigate as much as he possibly can.

John can do this.

He can do this for Sherlock.

And if he’s going to do it, well, then he is certainly going to do it right. So when a pretty woman wearing an apricot hued head wrap and a nose, eyebrow, and lip piercing asks if he’d like help, he ignores the hot stinging flash of panic down his spine, and accepts.

 

**********

 

They stop into Sherlock’s favourite Thai place from uni on the way to the Tube.

Over Pad Pong Karee with prawns, Drunken Duck, Khao pad, and Som Tum, John and Sherlock share a comfortable silence. It is broken only by the quiet conversations around them, the snap of their chopsticks colliding as they eat off each other’s plates, and the muted slurry slush of the traffic outside the window at their backs.

They sit next to each other. John on the inside so that their elbows don’t jostle as they eat. Sherlock’s left hand rests on John’s knee, the heat of his palm seeping through John’s jeans to bloom across his skin. Across from them, their shopping bags fill the other bench of the booth. Their beers drip condensation onto the tabletop in shiny mirrored pools. A woman sits at the back of the restaurant doing sums on an old calculator, the type that writes up bills. The whir of typewriter wheel and the clack of the keys punctuates the sounds of the restaurant.

It's uncomfortably warm inside, the windows are fogged with steam, and John is sweating in his jumper. Sherlock is down to his shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled up to his elbows. Gaudy, flashing Christmas lights are strung about haphazardly, trimmed with sprigs of holly here and there. Carols on the radio play softly in the background.

John takes Sherlock’s hand in his. Turns it over in his lap, palm up. He tucks his thumb into the heart of it, wraps his fingers loosely around the back.

Sherlock’s fingers curl in, holding lightly, the tangerine beams from the street lights outside reflecting on the beds of his nails.

He’s got beautiful hands. Long, and lithe, and elegant.

And scarred.

From chemicals and cuts and carelessness and callouses and cruelties. The creamy skin of his wrists and forearms marred by accidents and abrasions and burns and freckles and needles and the sweet blue rivers of his veins.

There has to be, John thinks, a certain amount of quid-pro-quo for this sort of thing in a relationship.

Not that John would know.

He’s never made one work before.

But, then again, he’s never wanted to before either.

He’s never spoken about it, not outside of therapy, but if Sherlock can talk about his overdoses, about how he coped and how he found a way to survive, John can do the same.    

“I used to ride the trains,” John says around the burning pebble of fear lodged in his windpipe.

Sherlock stills beside him. His lashes flickering as he pulls himself out of whatever place in his mind palace he had retreated to. His shoulders straighten, a slack line pulled taut, and he turns his head just enough so that he meets John’s eyes, two blades of silver strafing over John’s face.

“When I thought I might, er, want to.” He pokes at a curry soaked prawn, blood throbbing in his cheeks. He pushes the words out through clipped teeth, “want to end things. I rode the trains.”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything. He simply watches John, attentive, probing, reading things in John’s expression he’s not even sure he’s revealing, but his fingers tuck in over John’s thumb and give a subtle squeeze and John feels some of the tension in his chest release and when he breathes the air pours in and the pounding at his temples subsides.

“I rode them all night sometimes. All day. Spent nearly my entire pension every month on Oyster cards and Costa coffees and coronation bloody chicken.” John pushes the prawn around his plate. “I took my gun with me everywhere I went, though. It’s insane. I couldn’t stay in my bedsit because I was afraid I’d use it, but I couldn’t leave it behind when I left.” John shakes his head. It’s something he still doesn’t understand about that time. If he closes his eyes he can still feel the vibration of the rails through the soles of his feet, the sway and the judder and the stuttering lurch as the train braked, the fetid miasma of smells that forced him to breathe through his mouth, leaving his tongue constantly parched, his lips tight and cracked at the corners, the sound of trash scuttling across the bottom of the car, strangers pressed too close and the intimate scents of their bodies, the red line his cane’s handle left across his palm, and the dig of the gun in the small of his back.

The sound of Sherlock’s voice pulls him back.

“When I was in rehab the first time I was matched up with this therapist, who, apart from being an idiot who believed that yoga was a proper substitute for cocaine—” Sherlock rolls his eyes. “—did have one useful piece of wisdom that has stuck with me ever since.”

“Yeah, what was it?”

“He said that we’re all just dealing with entropy in different ways. That the very nature of the universe is a state of disorder. He said that the existential, nihilist crisis I’d been experiencing ever since I could remember, was basically the normal state of affairs for everyone. I just had to find a purpose to make the chaos worthwhile. I think it might have been the same for you when you came back from Afghanistan. You had a purpose, but you’d lost it.”

Sherlock turns to face him, twisting his long body and resting his forearm on the tabletop. John nods slowly; the words strike him as true. When he had met Sherlock, when he had felt like he was helping people once more, that he was useful, it had turned his life around. He no longer cleaned and maintained a gun with almost religious reverence. He no longer traveled the length and breadth of all of London’s boroughs to keep from putting that well oiled barrel in his mouth and swallowing a bullet.

“Up until that point I had been asking the wrong question: Why? On the surface there was no rhyme or reason why people did the awful, nonsensical things they did. So I switched it. I decided to find out how. At crime scenes the how will lead you to the why. If I could accept that the equilibrium of the system was at it’s core, unpredictable, I could accept that I couldn’t change it, but that I could in some small part work to control the damage. And I do that through seeing justice served. If the world was a puzzle, then I would be a puzzle solver. _Voilà_. Purpose.

“Before I left I didn’t understand what it meant to let other people in. I would gladly die for you, but I could never _tell_ you that. You had become a part of my purpose for living, but I didn’t think I could ever matter that much to anyone else. I believed I was unlovable. And everything I did only sustained that reality. So I died. And I truly didn’t think I would ever come back. I would never have done that, in front of you, if I thought I would survive what came next."

Sherlock doesn't even take a sodding breath, just plunges on, and John can feel his heart quicken, tauten, constrict. He stares at Sherlock, at the contortion of his mouth as he shapes the words, the crimson stain on his cheeks, the quartz crystal clarity of his eyes. The crack of the typewriter keys is like distant gunfire, John feels each sharp report in his chest. Blood pounds in his ears. John holds Sherlock's hand, holds on for dear life. 

“When I returned I tried to find my purpose again. I tried to go cold turkey and quit the drugs. I tried to get you to forgive me. I tried to go back to work. But it wasn’t enough,” Sherlock continues, softer, sadder. “It can never be enough. Nature dictates that it won’t ever be sufficient because chaos is the stasis. And when none of it mattered because I had hurt everyone I loved too badly, I died again. Only it didn’t work. _Again_.” Muttered, “Sodding Mycroft." Pushing a brusque hand through his hair, as if it is the very height of irritation that his brother had had the gall to save his life. "And when I woke up I decided that I had to do it differently. My life is not just my own, you know. Death is something that happens to everyone else. I couldn't do that to any of you again. Now, there is science. There is the work. And there is you. These are my constants. Otherwise I keep moving. Keep learning. Keep pushing. I can’t stay still. Staying still will kill me. Do you see?”

“ _Jesus_ ,” John exhales, bleeding out. Sherlock has always wielded truth like a scalpel, but rarely turns it on himself. John tries to gather all the splintered pieces of pain together, make them into a whole so that he can see Sherlock clearly, but they refract the light, obscuring. _Entropy_ , John thinks. _Chaos_.

Sherlock, oblivious, just keeps going. “I know it’s a lot. I know _I’m_ a lot. And if you don’t want to participate I am perfectly capable of continuing to stimulate myself in the manner I was before. You don’t have to take this on, John. I love you. I don’t want to ask something of you that makes you uncomfortable.”

The contrast is dizzying. It still shocks John sometimes and he has to remind himself that this Sherlock isn’t the same one who jumped off a building. This Sherlock has grown up. This Sherlock is self-aware. This Sherlock _cares_. John still wonders what Sherlock went through while he was away that changed him so drastically, but who still, in his heart, believes that he isn’t worth the same sacrifices that he himself was willing to make for others.

John finds all of the responses that present themselves wanting, insufficient. He feels like he needs time to process what Sherlock just shared. He says, “Sherlock, I don’t think having experimental sex is too much to ask of me. I want you to be able to ask for what you need."

Sherlock nods, but his brow is crinkled up. John waits. “And when I asked for a blow job the other day…”

Ah.

“You were being a prick,” John has no trouble informing him. “You can’t treat people poorly and then expect a reward.”

Sherlock nods as if this makes sense, and then ruins it with a smirk. “But you ended up helping anyway so…”

“Well, I didn’t know that when I told you to go suck your own cock, you’d take it as a bloody challenge,” John replies, drily.

Sherlock chuckles and then leans in for a kiss.

His lips are buttery soft and he tastes of beer and fried rice when John leans in closer, pushing his tongue between them. It soothes the scorched feeling in the back of his throat, relief unwinding the twisted up knot in his chest.

“How about we go home and have some of that experimental sex now?”

God, his voice.

John feels the deep velvet baritone of it shiver down the length of his body to pulse in his cock. His toes curl in his shoes. He wants, more than anything, to be pressed as close as he possibly can to Sherlock, with no barriers between. Wants to give him everything he needs. To touch all of his sharp places that he can't touch with words. Acknowledge them. Make them seen.  _Yes, but h_ _ow?_ , he is thinking, frantic. _How do I...?_

Even as he is nodding, "Yes." Growling, “ _Fuck_ yes." Untangling their hands, he ignores the tremors in his fingers, and signals for the check.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this universe Sherlock's second overdose happened when he came back from the Fall. If you would like to re-read the part where John is remembering that, it happens in [Chapter Nine](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7858225/chapters/19453264) of Guilty Secrets.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who welcomed me back so warmly. Your comments mean the world to me and really helped me through a recent crisis of confidence that was making it difficult to write. Thank you so much for your support and your enthusiasm for this story. I love you all. <3 <3 <3 <3


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...one big black dildo...
> 
> For lawyermargo, who was in need of cheering up and loves a jealous John. <3 <3 <3
> 
> Unbeta'd because my betas don't deserve to have to tackle two chapters in one week.
> 
> *throws porn at you* Happy Sunday!

“What’s the matter?” One eye slitted open, as he massages shampoo into his curls, a sliver of icy blue in the harsh fluorescent light.

“Nothing’s the matter,” John says, reaching up to slide the curtain closed behind him. It shrieks, shrill and grating on the metal rod, and makes John grind his teeth together.

“You’re very serious,” Sherlock observes, far too composed for a man in the nude, seizing up another equally naked man, who is currently covered in a sheet of bristling goosebumps. “Why are you?”

“Budge over, yeah?” John evades, stepping forward into the spray, dipping his head into it, as Sherlock obligingly switches places with him.

John can feel Sherlock’s gaze on him as he lets the water course over him, chasing away the chill. After a few blissful moments John feels a tap on his elbow and they switch again. John reaching for the shampoo this time, while Sherlock rinses.

The small space slowly fills with steam. Coiling around their ankles, slicking the hair on their shins, droplets beading on their chests and shoulders. They twist and shuffle in tiny circles, a clumsy choreography of need.  
  
“I must say…I’m…intrigued.”

“Mmm, you are…”

John picks up the loofa as Sherlock steps beneath the nozzle behind him. Uncaps the bottle of body wash. Soaps it up.

The suds push between his fingers, warm and thick.

John squeezes and the bubbles pop and shimmer.

Iridescent rainbows there and gone.

The scent is green, sharp and sweet, like summer grass. John can’t see the bottle’s label, it’s one of Sherlock's collection of expensive black, matte bottles he orders from God knows where, but it evokes something inside him.

Bright summer sunshine and cool dew, slick under bare feet. Slipping into the shade of the plane trees as into a pond, chill and dark. Harry chasing him through the woods.

His grandfather’s house in Edinburgh.

He hasn’t thought of it in years.

“Is this new?” John asks, tilting his head.

Sherlock’s eyes follow the movement. John watches him swallow, watches his Adam’s apple bob. “It reminded me of you.”

The steam fogs the air, a fine fragrant rain. John reaches for him.

His hands roam.

Over Sherlock’s shoulders and down his sinewy arms.

John trails the sponge back up, over Sherlock’s pectorals, brushing over the tight knots of his nipples, which makes Sherlock draw in a shaky breath.

He follows the rivulets of soap down.

Down Sherlock’s stomach, which ripples beneath John’s touch, muscles tensing, then, releasing.

Sherlock’s pale skin, fine like snow or the sleek downy feathers on a swan’s wing. Smooth like the worn wood on the stairs at Baker Street, polished white in the center where their steps have fallen, satiny, like the inside of shells. The limpid glow of the embers in their hearth; the way his eyes are like a cold fire, starlit.

 _I love you_ , John thinks, feeling quiet. Feeling sure. He had the cab ride back to think. He knows what he wants to ask for.

His hand clenches around the sponge and the suds break and run.

“I admit when you said that we would both need to prepare I, _ah_ —“

John wraps his hand around him, strokes him, gently.

So gently.

“Turn around,” John whispers, discarding the loofa in favour of laying hands on him. Rubbing the soap into the pinked up skin of his ribs, his waist, his hips sliding under John’s fingertips as Sherlock pivots, his big feet squeaking against the porcelain. John likes the way he fills John’s palms. The breadth of his back and shoulders, speckled with freckles that John can set his mouth to, picking a trail down the rushing torrent of his spine to the dimpled small of his back. John cups two plump handfuls and tugs, up and out so that Sherlock is forced to brace his hands against the tile and bow his back. Beautiful. John slides an appreciative hand over the swells of his cheeks, slicks it up his back to sink into the impetuous riot of his curls.

Fisting.

From Sherlock’s throat: a low, honeyed keening.

John slips his other hand between Sherlock’s legs, which part for him, heels slipping to spread wider, as wide as he can go, which isn’t, John laments, far enough.

“Did you use the rooms a lot?” John asks, rubbing his fingers over the entrance to Sherlock’s body, and tracing the ridge of his seam up to his perineum, before scratching his short nails through the staticky hair that curls around his bollocks.

Sherlock, in true Sherlockian fashion, doesn’t ask: which rooms, just says, low and breathy, “Yes.”

John nods. He’d been expecting that. He would have known, he suspects, if Sherlock had been enthusiastically wanking in 221B this whole time. He knows now that Sherlock is not quiet during sex. In fact, he’s very much the opposite. If he had been having orgasms, John would have heard them.

“And were you alone?” This is the point John is unclear on. He knows that Sherlock didn’t have relationships, but now that John has seen _Au Lit_ , he wonders if there weren’t people who might have been willing to…lend a hand.

“Most of the time.” Sherlock’s voice is hoarse and he turns his head to the side, looking at John over the curve of his shoulder.

John licks his lips.

Ok.

He finds he’s not much surprised by this fact either.

“I want you to show me.” John slides his hand to the outside of Sherlock’s thigh, trails soapy fingers up to his hip. Releases his hold on Sherlock’s hair, cups it around the other hip. Sherlock straightens. Leans back.

John wraps his arms around his middle and nuzzles at his spine, up towards his nape, breathes in the spicy floral notes of the shampoo he prefers.

“It’s supposed to be your turn,” comes the quiet rumble. The words muffled by skin and bone.

“It is,” John says, into his skin. “I have something, a toy. I’ll use it, but I want—“

John swallows.

“I want to see how you touch yourself.”

“Will you be touching me too?”

John shakes his head. “Maybe later. But I want you to show me, I want—“

“Ok. It’s ok.”

John breathes. Draws the scent of Sherlock deep into his lungs, tightens his arms around his waist. “Thank you.”

 

  
**********

 

  
They lie in bed. John on Sherlock’s side, pillow propped against the footrest. Sherlock on John’s side, nearest the door, pillow tucked at the base of the headboard. Between them, on the mattress, lie a bottle of lube with a pump top, the slim pink vibrator of now notorious auto-fellacio fame, for Sherlock, and a stainless steel plug, for John. Next to the bed stands Sherlock’s hardback chair, a long, thick, black dildo attached to the seat with a suction cup.

John’s heart is racing. He tries to focus on the familiar. The soft sheets beneath him that smell faintly of Mrs. Hudson’s lilac fabric softener. Sherlock’s judo certificate hanging on the wall over their bed. The ribbed, celadon wallpaper. The filmy white curtains pulled shut over the window. The hiss of the radiator behind him.

Sherlock.

Suffused in the warm, amber light from the lamp, he glows. It picks out the fair, auburn hair on his chest, sets it glinting. His hair snakes across the pillow in glossy obsidian strands, his eyelashes inking his cheeks in charcoal as he looks down the length of his body at John. His lips are parted, pink and wet from his tongue.

“I’m not sure how to begin,” he admits softly.

John bends his arm over his head, sets the other on top of his stomach. “What would you do if I wasn’t here?”

Sherlock glances down at the vibrator and then back at John. “I’m not sure. Do you want me to…” He pauses, scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip. "Do you want me to talk while I do it?”

“Would that be ok?” John asks. Sherlock nods. “Then yeah, I’d like that.”

“What about you?” Sherlock reaches out and nudges the plug towards John and John smiles.

“Don’t worry about me.”

The corner of Sherlock’s mouth ticks up and then he rolls his head on his pillow, shifting his legs, his hips, his shoulders; getting comfortable. His eyes slide shut and his breathing slows down, becoming intentionally deep. John watches the rise and fall of his chest, and then does the same, mirroring Sherlock’s movements.

In the dark, Sherlock’s voice is amplified. A sonorous thunder rolling under John’s skin.

“When I’m at home, sometimes I like to take my time,” he starts. “I touch myself everywhere but my cock and see if I can bring myself off that way. Sometimes I like it hard and quick. I’ll take out my biggest dildo and stick it to the wall and bugger myself silly on it. When I just need to be fucked. Hard.”

Fuck. John’s breath catches and his hand slides down to where his cock is swelling, curving against his hipbone. He palms it, rubbing the heel of it up, dragging his foreskin up the shaft, digging in, _hard_.

“And sometimes I use a fantasy.”

John opens his eyes and watches as Sherlock reaches over and pumps lube into the cup of his fingers. There is a soft blush moving up his chest, flushing the column of his throat. His eyes are dark with pupil as his gaze meets John’s, his hand wrapping around his erection.

They wank slowly, their eyes roving over each other’s body hungrily. John’s heart thuds in his cheeks, his chest, his hand.

“I used to start like this,” Sherlock says, breathless. “Touching myself while you would be in the sitting room, watching telly, or fannying about on your computer.”

John licks his lips, the skin burning and dry. Sherlock’s hand glides over his cock, slippery, shiny, and dark with blood, circling tight around the fat glistening crown, before smoothing back down. His stomach heaves and his nipples gather themselves up into two rosy peaks.

“I could hear you moving about.” His legs fall wider, knees bent, as he slips his other hand between his legs. John curses and reaches for the lube and the plug, his eyes never leaving the sight of those long, long fingers, petting at the furled bud and the coarse hairs. The lube leaves sticky tracks behind, gleaming fingerprints imprinted on the inside of his thigh. “Used to imagine you coming in; finding me like this.”

“Fuck _me_ ,” John murmurs, under his breath, imagining it, finding Sherlock like this. Before.

That quick double tap of his knuckles and then, when he got no reply, pushing the door open and…

“You would sit on that chair there and tell me to go on. Not to let you interrupt me. To get myself ready for you; that you wanted to watch.” Sherlock moans and clenches his right hand tight at the base of his cock, holding. Holding tight. John sucks in a breath as a thin drizzle of precome drips down Sherlock’s prick, throbbing out of the cherry red slit. Sherlock takes two deep, shuddering breathes and then releases himself, resting both hands on the bed at his sides.

John holds completely still, afraid to break Sherlock’s concentration. There is a sheen of sweat on his forehead and his freckles are standing out on his red skin, tiny pinpricks of black. As his skin heats up, the clean, verdant scent of the soap Sherlock had bought for him, accompanied by the bitter notes of musk and sweat, fill the air. His eyes are shut, his forehead wrinkled, and his hands are kneading the sheets, restless.

John’s wondering if he aught to be worried when Sherlock suddenly slips his right hand back between his legs.

“I’d start to show you,” he says, voice hoarse and crackly and incredibly, incredibly sexy. Low and rough and vulnerable. “But you couldn’t, you couldn’t _see_ , and, so I—“ John watches as Sherlock rolls neatly onto his side and then pushes up onto his hands and knees.

“ _Sherlock_.”

John feels the air knocked out of him. He stares.

At the white heart of Sherlock’s plump arse and the trembling length of his long white thighs. His cock hangs below him, swaying heavy and full, as he fiddles with the lube. John wants to touch him so badly, there’s an ache gathering just under his breastbone, but it’s against the rules so he settles for rewetting his hand when Sherlock is done and slipping his fingers down to his arsehole, the plug warming up in his other hand.

Sherlock starts slow. Just fingertips at first, just barely breaching the rim. John feels the delicious stretch as his own body opens, and watches, in counterpoint, as Sherlock’s hole widens so that two can dip inside, pumping slowly, in and out. Short, shallow thrusts that Sherlock rocks back to meet. His knees slip on the sheets, pushing wider as he takes his fingers deeper, moaning softly into his pillow.

John makes a noise, part whine, part whimper, because those should be _his_ fingers making Sherlock moan that way, and Sherlock lifts his head and tucks it over his bent arm. His eyes travel slowly up the indolent display of John’s body, taking in his fingers matching Sherlock’s pace and his hand stroking slowly up and down his cock, to meet his eyes.

“You had better put that plug in now,” he says, his voice a rock-rough purr, “because sometimes you get impatient,” sliding his fingers out of his arse and pushing up to kneeling, “sometimes you just can’t wait for me to ride your cock and you tell me to stop…” gathering another handful of lube, “…to forget about the vibrator, and just, climb on.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” John gasps, hand spasming around his twitching, leaking prick, watching, helpless, as Sherlock climbs off the bed and steps over to the chair, turning around to face John as he straddles the seat and lowers himself down.

Down.

Down.

Down until the bulbous black head of the dildo is just pressing against his body. One hand braced on the back of the chair, Sherlock slicks up the long, hard, onyx length with the other, so that it’s dripping, glossy and slick. Holds it steady.

They both moan as Sherlock sinks onto it, the head disappearing inside.

Sherlock takes a moment to adjust, before sliding, slowly, slowly, and John, in tandem, pushes the head of the plug inside himself. The toy has a substantial weight and a slick, smooth surface and it goes in easy; John breathes and wills his muscles to relax, and a second later his body pulls it deeper until it’s nestled right against his prostate.

The sounds of their ragged breathing fill the room as both of them bottoms out.

John can’t look away. Sherlock’s eyes are closed, his head tipped back, his curls tumbling down his nape in an ebony tumult. He's carved in light, in tension, in sweat, his muscles clenched and straining.

“You tell me I’m beautiful, I’m gorgeous, how I feel so tight and hot around your cock,” Sherlock says, his voice taking on a drunken laziness now, as he trails his hands up his stomach to play with his nipples. His thighs bunch and shake as he raises himself up and then back down, his cock flushed a deep brooding red, his bollocks pulled in against his body. “You tell me to move, to ride you, that you want to feel me come on your cock…”

John feels a flash of heat burst down his spine and he feels, irrationally, angry. He fists his hand tightly around his cock and the blood pounds in his forehead, throbbing in his ears. That should be his cock driving into Sherlock, making him moan wantonly like that, making him look utterly lost in abandonment, in pleasure.

It should be for him that Sherlock is rolling his hips, grinding his beautiful arse down into his thighs, whose hips he can grip as Sherlock undulates and writhes.

John sits up and the toy is forced deeper inside him, pressing more insistently against his prostate and he groans loud and heartfelt at the change in pressure.

Sherlock opens his eyes and their gazes meet with a crack. It sizzles through John in a scalding lash.

“You love how I feel, how I move,” Sherlock says, his voice a mere whisper now, his face blissed out and slack. “I tell you how big you are, how thick, how I could happily die fucking your perfect, perfect cock.” He reaches behind him and grips the chair’s backrest, rising up on powerful thighs, and then he really starts to move.

Bouncing and bucking on John’s imaginary cock so that John can hear the slap of his arse cheeks against the wood, the slap of his cock against his stomach, and the loud liquid squelch each time Sherlock comes down too quick. It’s lewd and devastatingly sexy at once and John is jealous of a plastic cock. He is, he can’t help it. This began as an exercise in easing Sherlock and himself into this new adventure, to get Sherlock to a place that he can trust John, but now all he wants is to tear it out of Sherlock’s body and see to him himself. He wants Sherlock bouncing in his lap on his all too real, rock hard, aching cock and it’s dreadfully, outrageously unfair.

“You won’t touch me,” Sherlock says, whinging. “You won’t wrap your hand around me and finish me off. You want to me to come on just your prick.” John sees him tip over the edge, watches as Sherlock's momentum falters, his legs trembling hard. “I do. I do. I come for you. For you. For you, _John_ …”

He bows backward and stills, his cock pulsing, striping his chest and belly with ropes of pearlescent come. The sound that is ripped from him is unreal, a feral, animal cry.

John watches as Sherlock slumps forward, dildo still buried deep inside him, his hair fallen forward, obscuring his face. John scrambles out of bed and goes to fetch a wet flannel from the bathroom, grunting as the plug moves around inside him, a constant reminder of it’s presence.

He kneels in front of Sherlock and cups his cheek. Sherlock turns his face into it, nosing into John’s palm.

“Sit up, love, let me clean you up,” John says softly, one hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, helping him to straighten. Sherlock sways a little, his eyes unfocused, his skin pink and warm, his limbs loose with the rush of endorphins and oxytocin pumping through his system. John wipes him down and then steadies him as Sherlock stands up, letting the dildo slip out of him with a wince. John steers him into bed, pulls the duvet over him, and then climbs in beside him.

Sherlock pours himself into John’s arms in a pliant melted rush of supple, silky skin. John wraps his arms around his neck and pulls him close, his cock still hard and trapped between them, the sticky head rubbing against Sherlock’s stomach.

“Oh,” Sherlock sighs, slipping his hand between them to wrap around John. John shivers and pushes involuntarily into the touch.

“You don’t have to,” John murmurs without much conviction, already close.

The plug shifts inside him as Sherlock draws John’s leg up and over his hip, opening him up for Sherlock to reach down and tug at the base. Lights snap up John’s body, sparks catching, and the heat seeps into his marrow, warming him up from the inside out, incandescent.

“That’s it,” Sherlock says, against John’s throat, as John ruts mindlessly into Sherlock’s big fist. “That’s it, John, come for me.”

John thrusts, once, twice, his orgasm washing through him in a cascade of burgeoning warmth, surging out to every part of him in a sweet sunlit spill.

They end up soiling another flannel before they’re both finally encased beneath the duvet, wrapped up in each other.

“I’d call that an unmitigated success,” Sherlock whispers, voice sleepy and deep in John’s ear.

“Quite,” John says, too tired to respond. He pushes his arse back, deeper into Sherlock, their legs interleaving, their hands tucked against John’s chest.

There’s a long pause, before:

“You know it’s ridiculous for you to be jealous of a dildo, don’t you?”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“You looked fairly murderous at some points!”

“Shut up.”

“I thought you were going to challenge it to a duel!” The prat is laughing now, shaking against John’s back.

“I said, _shut up_.”

“Ok, ok.”

But he’s still chuckling silently, vibrating with suppressed glee.

“Sod this,” John mutters, pushing himself up to sitting and grabbing his pillow.

“Oh, stop, stop, I was only kidding.” Sherlock’s arms wind around him tight so that he can’t stand up.

“Are you finished?”

“Quite.”

“Turn over. Go to sleep. If there is even one peep out of you, I swear to god I’ll sleep in my old bed.”

John tucks in behind him, slings his arm over Sherlock’s waist.

“I love you,” Sherlock whispers, a few moments later.

John presses his palm over Sherlock’s heart. “I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plug John uses in this chapter is an njoy anal plug. You can find a review of it [here, on Oh Joy Sex Toy](https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/njoy/) :)


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear readers,
> 
> A brief note before we begin. I began this epilogue (cough- sequel) with very good intentions. A fun, simple romp through a bunch of sex toys! What could be easier. *bitter laughter at my innocence* However, as so often happens to me, the characters refuse to cooperate. They refuse to follow my carefully laid plan. They have all these _feelings_ they'd like me to deal with. So. This is no longer a 5+1. There will be more sex toys, I promise! But as of right now, it won't be five times they used sex toys and one time they didn't, as I had originally promised. If, for some reason, that was the premise you were reading this for: I'm sorry to disappoint you. Turn back now! However, if you're not, I hope you'll enjoy the ride with me.
> 
> Thank you, as ever, for following along. You WIP readers keep me going.
> 
> All my love,  
> Elle

“How are you?”

The clock on the wall ticks. The water in the fountain babbles. Ella waits.

“Sherlock and I had an argument.”

“What about?”

_John, showered and dressed, standing at the counter as the coffee perked. The shuffle scuff of Sherlock walking up behind him. The sensation of long arms winding around his waist and the warm press of Sherlock’s naked body up against him as the sheet is spread and settled over John. The smell of him, ripe and deep and heady._

_Gruff, sleep rough words, murmured against John’s ear, “Are you still cross with me?”_

John scrapes two fingers over his right eyebrow. Against the grain and back. Smoothing. “He thinks I’m jealous of a dildo.”

“Pardon me?”

“He thinks…” John leans forward, elbows pressed to his knees, hands clasped between them. He stares at a stain on Ella’s rug. It looks like red wine, maybe blood. He looks up. Meets Ella’s steady stare. He pushes himself up and back. Heat pricking at his cheeks. “He wants to have all of this inventive sex, ok? Toys and scenarios, etc, etc.”

Ella nods, eyebrows arched.

_“I was never cross with you,” John had lied. The kitchen was dark, an emerald cave. Slushy ice/rain mix shushed against the glass of the window to their left._

_“Please have the courtesy not to lie to me. Especially not before I’ve had my coffee.”_

“And alright, I was a bit jealous, but it’s not for the reason he thinks. I’m not an idiot.”

Ella waits.

John laces his fingers together tighter. He shakes his head. His throat closes up.

“Ok, let’s start somewhere else. What’s changed since I last saw you?”

John tells her. Tells her about Sherlock’s revelations, about his past, about _Au Lit_ , and their Christmas presents to each other. “He’s just.” John takes a deep breath. It does nothing to calm the hammering of his heart against his ribs. Embarrassed, he barks, too loudly, “He’s just too bloody good at it, isn’t he? He is. He’s got no inhibitions and he’s spent the last two decades perfecting his form and I feel like an arsehole most of the time. Just along for the buggering ride.”

“Does he disparage you, during sex?”

“No!” John leans back, crosses his legs. Re-clasps his hands, winding them tighter. His bones crackle and pop. “Sorry. No, he’s nothing but encouraging and that’s bollocks. I’m not exactly inexperienced, you know, and…”

“Do you feel…threatened? By Sherlock’s skill in bed?”

“No.”

“No?”

“It’s not threatened. It’s…”

Ella waits.

_John hadn’t had the words. He poured his coffee into his to go mug and had kissed Sherlock goodbye. Begging off: paper work needing sorting. Boss on his case for getting dictation finished. Ella after. He had left Sherlock standing there, shrouded in white, a pale candle burning amidst the wavering green light._

“There’s a ring in my pocket.”

Ella looks surprised at this change in subject for a second, but quickly schools her expression back into one of gentle neutrality. “You’ve never spoken to me about wanting to get married. Has Sherlock brought it up?”

“No.”

“So, why now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it to do with how you’re feeling during sex?”

“I want him to know he’s enough.”

Ella cocks her head to the side, rests the cap of her pen against her bottom lip.

“That I won’t leave. It feels like— he says I love you, alright? Every night, right before we fall asleep. He says it like he’s ticking it off a list. I know, I know, he means it. But, he’s said hasn’t he? He’s said that he doesn’t know how to go about it, the love bit. And it feels like insecurity, yeah? Like he’s uncertain of me. Or, of us. Like he feels like if he doesn’t say it, it won’t be real. I want him to know it’s real.”

“And you think by getting married that he’ll feel more secure.”

John shrugs.

Nods.

“And what would change if you could somehow convince him it was real?”

The words burst out and John can’t be sure where exactly they come from but they feel like they’re torn up from somewhere deep. He thinks of roots, blanched and hairy, ugly, misshapen things that grow in the cold and dark earth. Buried. Secret. The words rasp in his throat. “He wouldn’t hurt himself. He would want to live.”

“Oh, John.”

John looks away.

“That’s a lot of pressure, isn’t it?”

“Pressure?”

“You can’t be someone’s reason for living, John. That’s too much responsibility for one person to carry.”

“But that’s the point, isn’t it? I can carry it. I can. I want to. I need him to know it.”

“John.”

He can’t look at her. The bones in his hands are pressing against his skin, knuckles popping white.

“John—“

“He says, if he stops moving, he’ll die.”

“And how does that make you feel? When he says things like that?”

“I want him to be honest with me. I want to know if he’s having trouble. I need him to tell me so that I can help.”

“But—”

“So I do whatever he asks. It’s sex, it’s not like I’m not getting anything out of it. I like it!”

“But—”

“It’s not asking so much of me, is it? To do this for him?”

“John—“

“But I’m angry. I am. I can’t stop it. I want to do what that dildo does for him. I want it to be me who can quiet the madness in his brain. It should be me, shouldn’t it? I’m his partner. What bloody good am I if I can’t be that for him? I should be able to be that for him, and…”

“John, stop.”

John does.

“This is a question of mental health, not a question of your fitness as a partner. Do you understand that?”

John doesn’t answer.

“Does Sherlock still see the therapist he was referred to after he left rehab?”

John shakes his head. Sherlock hated therapy.

“John, I know you love him. But you’ll never be able to “cure” him with your love.”

John hates her a little for those condescending rabbit ears bracketing a word they both know isn’t correct.

Sherlock doesn’t need curing.

Ella sees, maybe, the spark in John’s eyes. She softens. Amends, “I mean, he needs professional help. There are medications that could help balance him out.”

A death sentence, Sherlock had called them.

“John, there are ways to help Sherlock, to support him, but you are not responsible for convincing him that life is worth living. It will crush you eventually. You have to talk to Sherlock about how it makes you feel when he says these things. He may not realise the effect they have on you. To him, they are probably off-hand remarks. He needs to realise their consequences.”

John stands up.

“John, where are you—“

  
**********

 

The flat is dark when he arrives home. Mrs. Hudson is away visiting her sister for the holiday. She won’t return until after the New Year. It’s dark and cold, but John can hear Sherlock moving around above him. He takes the stairs two at a time.

On the cab ride home all he could think of was his boyhood home. He remembers the terrible loneliness. The prickling, livid, seething silence that existed between his parents. An ambivalence broken by fits of fury and broken crockery and the cutting slice of words whet on decades of hate and resentment. Harry and him, bred on it. Boiled into their blood, hardwired in their brains. It was in their bones. The quick fire temper. The inability to communicate. The impulse to repress, restrain, ignore, pretend. Him and Harry, two fists, clenched. Poverty and alcoholism and religion; a bad pick-mix. They didn’t invite friends home. Too embarrassed. Too afraid of everyone finding out. They waited. Waited for the day they could leave it behind.

But what they hadn’t expected was that they would carry it with them. Everywhere they went, the knee-jerk acid tongue, choosing fight over flight every time, finding ways, just like their parents, to blunt their feelings. Bury them. Drown them. Harry with alcohol, and John with war. Adults now. Stymied. Angry. Unable to connect.

John: bolted fast against the world.

And then,

Sherlock: a pick-lock.

And John: sprung; a door swinging wide.

The last two steps he walks slowly, the ring a clumsy weight against his thigh. He feels a jittery nervousness skittering through him, but also a deep-seated calm. He doesn’t doubt. They can do it. They can build the home they both never had. They can make their own kind of love, don’t need to base it on anyone else’s notion. Who cares if all they’ve known is the cautionary tale? All the reasons why love is bollocks and a lie? They can do it different. John is certain of it. Together, they can do anything. Together, they’re invincible.

When he sees Sherlock, slouched in his chair, the room dark but for the flicker of the fire in the grate, a feeling shimmers through John. It burns like laughter in his chest, throbs like an ache in his throat, tingles, that rush of blood to cut-off limbs, all over. That singular Sherlock feeling that John has never experienced with anyone else: of coming truly, spectacularly alive.

John doesn’t stop to remove his jacket or his shoes. He’s wet, chips of ice melting on his shoulders, raindrops in his hair. They trickle down his neck, a shock of cold against the heat of his skin.

He kneels.

Sherlock, head tipped to the side, cheek resting in the cup of his hand, blinks slowly at him, coming up from wherever he had been.

John licks his lips. Does one last search for any kind of hesitation. Finds none.

He brings out the box.

Watches, grinning, brimming, heart humming, skin singing, as Sherlock’s eyes fix on it.

And flare.

“Marry me.”

There’s no question mark. Just the sharp snick of the box opening. The wet gleam of the gold, flames licking up the curve of it.

“Marry me.”

The thin band between his fingers, slipping from it’s velvet notch, cold and hard. Indelible.

Sherlock’s left hand in John’s, palm to palm, soft ivory skin passing beneath the bright circle as the ring settles at the base of his finger.

“Sherlock, marry me. Yeah?”

There, finally, an opening. For a yes. For a no.

Sherlock is staring at his hand.

For one fleeting, terrifying feet-dropping-out-from-under-him-heart-plunging second, John thinks he might say no.

But then.

Oh,

 _then_.

Sherlock’s mouth, wet and parted and sure, pushing itself against John’s. John opens with a small grateful sound, sucks sweetly on his lips, his tongue.

_Yes._

His big hands cupping John’s neck, palms flushed with heat, the band, a cool, hard line against the nape of John’s neck.

_Yes._

Thumbs stroking over John’s cheeks, slipping in the moisture there, spreading it out, until the salt dries tight on John’s skin.

_Yes._

Dragging John closer, pulling him up, for one brief dizzying second they are parted, before Sherlock bends to him once more and takes his mouth, his hands on John’s shoulders, manoeuvring him back. Stumbling blind, John’s hands clenched in Sherlock’s shirt at his sides, holding on, as he is pushed and turned, through the kitchen and down the hall.

There are words caught in John’s throat, Ella’s words, _can’t cure him, cure him, cure him_ , doubting the best of John’s intentions, but they’re all inconsequential compared to what’s building between them as they touch.

_Yes._

Sherlock stops them just inside the threshold to their bedroom. His hands slip up to cradle John’s face and his kisses turn slower, deeper, more tender. John is lost in them. When his knees hit the bed, he sits down hard, dazed. It is Sherlock’s turn to kneel, head bent as he unties John’s shoes, the wild, frayed ends of his curls lit by the light from the kitchen. They halo him.

How do the sons of silent, bitter houses love?

In fits and starts, uncertain.

They circle it, untrusting. They belittle it, unknowing.

But to the tongue unaccustomed to sweetness, the taste of honey is a revelation.

Once the knowledge is had, it cannot be unknown.

And, at first, it cannot be denied or tainted.

It can only be revelled in.

This new—this raw and beautiful, unformed, improbable, wonderful—thing.

The swift heated pour of desire through their blood; the doubly intoxicating sensation of surrender.

The giving over.

The keeping of.

Trusting.

How do the sons of silent, bitter houses love?

 _Like this_ , John thinks. Lips touching softly as fingers slip over buttons and cotton and wool. Caught and tangled together. Shirts forgotten for richer pastures, sifting through silvered tawny strands and velvet night-black curls. Threading. Cradling. Cupping. Gripping. Holding.

Holding.

Held.

 _Like this_ , he thinks, fiercely. Defiantly. As if Ella could see.

Could see how Sherlock is with John, and only John. How John is with Sherlock, and only Sherlock.

Doors swinging wide.

 _Like this_ , he thinks, as he falls back below the moving torrent of Sherlock’s warm bare body. Palm pressed to the heart-stricken skin of his chest. Fervent kisses. Trembling touches. Pleasure, a hot sluice, cutting through.

 _Like this_ , he thinks, as they lie together after in the warm and living darkness. Sherlock’s ear pressed to the sweet slowing beat of John’s heart, his curls a silky tumble against John’s throat, as he whispers, sleepy and deep, on cue,  _I love you_. John strokes the sweat slick valley of Sherlock’s spine, counts the black stars on the wing of his shoulder blade. The ring shines, glinting on Sherlock’s hand, curled against John’s side, as he thinks only,

 

_Like this._


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some fluffy ridiculous texting for a Saturday morning.

_I can’t stop smiling._

_Oh?_

_Yes, oh, you bloody git._

_I admit to being slightly giddy myself this morning._

_Oh? Only slightly?_

_I find I’m quite ridiculously pleased with the idea of you being my husband._

_The feeling is entirely mutual._

_It’s idiotic._

_It’s really not._

_It’s irrational!_

_Nope._

_Entirely fatuous considering the facts._

_What facts?_

_1) We already live together._

_Yes, very good. I’m chuffed you’ve noticed._

_2) We are in a monogamous, committed relationship._

_We are?_  
_;)_

 _Ha bloody ha._  
_3) We have affixed our signatures to a deed to a house we intend to spend our dotage in._

_Hmm, yes, we did, didn’t we._

_In conclusion, getting married is superfluous. We already have all the trappings of marriage except for the acknowledgement of the state and of that I have little to no interest in obtaining._

_But._

_Yes._

_No, you see, this is where you explain what the but is._

_Ah. Well, but, I still find I’m giddy over the idea of being able to call you my husband._

_Right. I’m glad that’s sorted._

_Is it?_  
_Sorted?_

_Yes._

_I suppose it is._

_Good. What are you up to?_

_Preparing._

_Preparing for what?_

_For tonight._

_All right…_  
_I’ll bite._  
_What’s tonight?_

_A gift, of sorts._

_You mean, one of our Christmas gifts? :) :) :)_

_Yes and no._

_You are absolutely infuriating, you know that right?_

_And yet, you want to marry me._

_And yet, I do._  
_Blimey, I’ve just realised something. I’m the mad one, aren’t I?_

_Do keep up._

_LOL_  
_Jesus._  
_We’re both barking._  
_And you know what? You’re right. It is a bit ridiculous. I really can’t stop smiling._  
_(Even if I am curious about what this second gift is…)_

_All right, I will humour you. It does include one of the Christmas gifts I bought, but it also includes something I am making for you. Call it an engagement gift if you like._

_Now I feel guilty. I didn’t get you anything._

_You wanting to marry me is gift enough, I assure you. I don’t believe anyone has ever wanted to keep me before. In fact, quite the opposite. They couldn’t wait to be rid of me._

_Sherlock, God, you’re breaking my heart._

_It’s all right. Look how it turned out._

_I love you. I can’t wait to marry you. I want to keep you for always, ok?_

_I love you too. Be home at 6, yes?_

_Yes. I can’t wait._  
_< 3 <3 <3 <3_

_Are those hearts?_

_Yes._

_They look like penguin tracks._

_Can they be both?_

_Yes._

_Good._  
_I <penguin track> you_

_Christ, you know, you’re a little bit infuriating yourself._

_And yet, you want to marry me._

_And yet, I do._  
_My cheeks are starting to hurt._

 _:)_  
_Ok, I really have to go. My lunch is over. I love you. See you at 6._

_< 3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want some more penguin (pengwing) tracks on your heart you could spend your day snuggled in with cwb's pengs who left penguin tracks all over mine.
> 
>  
> 
> [Emperor Tales of the Frozen South](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4288344/chapters/9714000)
> 
> I hope you all have an amazing weekend!


	6. Chapter Six

John gets off early. The other locum had gotten her schedule wrong, showed up two hours early, and told John to go before they noticed.

The weather is terrible, another deluge; and bitterly, bitterly cold. Two more days until Christmas and the Tube is packed, so John gets off and walks the last few blocks, weaving in and out of the pressing crowd. Twinkling lights are strung up in the trees and giant snowflakes blinker above their heads, turned down against the wind. John smiles at lampposts trimmed in bristling green fir boughs and red velvet bows. He pauses to catch the sound of voices carroling through the propped open door of a church. He’s soaked through and should be on his way to a proper indignant rage, would be normally, but instead he feels like he’s floating through London’s harried streets, unable to keep the smile from curving his lips. His cheeks ache for it. It’s the first time he’s looked forward to the holidays in as long as he can remember.

He picks up Chinese take-away on the way home, but still manages to arrive forty minutes before he’s supposed to. Sherlock’s in the shower.

John stows the food in the fridge and hangs up his coat, still dripping, on it’s peg. He tosses the Waitrose bag full of his soiled clothes down next to his chair. A sick infant with impeccable aim. His socks squeak on the lino as he walks through the kitchen; they’re soaked through. His trousers, a pair of navy blue scrubs borrowed from work, are in a similar state. It’d been absolutely pissing rain as he walked the last two blocks from the restaurant on Marylebone. The door to the en suite is open, steam thickening the air as John makes his way down the hallway. It’s dark in the flat, aside from the fairy lights on the mantle, twinkling amidst the pine boughs, and the light from the bathroom pools on the floor ahead of him, bright and liquid, shimmering.

John hears the taps groan as Sherlock turns them off. A shiver skates down his spine, he prickles with goosebumps. Pausing, he quickly turns up the heat on the thermostat before leaning into the jamb.

Sherlock’s back is to him. He’s toweling off, oblivious. John takes a moment to watch him completely unguarded.

His hair is polished to a high gloss. The light glisters through it, catching the water droplets sliding down his neck to bead on his shoulders, in shining, trembling pearls. He’s wet with the light and the water both, his skin peach and pink and fresh; John wants to sink his teeth into all the juicy, plump parts of him; taste him, sweet and tart. Feel his springy hair crackle on his tongue, and the hard, smooth flesh glide against his lips. His mouth waters with it. His hands, at his sides, twitch.

He watches.

As Sherlock reaches long, lithe arms into the air. One at a time, to scrub at his armpits, setting the bronze hair there frizzing. Electric with static. John can feel it spark in his fingertips. He wants to bury his nose there, breathe deep the animal musk of Sherlock’s intimate places.

He watches.

As Sherlock rubs the towel across his chest and belly, out of sight. The muscles in his back move. Bunching and smoothing out in turn. Shoulder blades flashing like rapier edges beneath the skin. Black freckles dotting his fine pale skin, a haphazard trail leading down. Down. Down to the dimpled small of his back. Two divots where John could set his thumbs, bring him closer.

Watching.

The curve of his arse and the spray of auburn hair that glints as he bends to run the towel over his thighs. Stretch marks snake across his hips, veins of purple and bone white, shining. Leftover from a growth spurt that gave him seven inches, all in one summer. Sherlock had said he had felt every inch, he said the pain had felt like someone was taking his bones and stretching him on a wrack.

John watches as Sherlock realises he’s being watched. The slight jerk of his head to the side as he catches sight of John in the corner of his eye, bent over his feet. The tension that ripples through him and then the release when he registers who it is. Slowly, he straightens.

John watches as he turns, the towel listing in his right hand.

His clear eyes. His rumpled hair. The streaks of rose painted across his cheekbones. The drag of his tongue over his bottom lip, wet. Red. His ribs, rising and falling with his breath. His belly slick with a cascade of black hair. His cock, sheathed and soft, on top of the heavy, dark weight of his bollocks and a wild thatch of ruddy curls. Nipples peaked and hard. His Adam’s apple rides as he swallows. His clavicles shift and settle. His long toes grip the tile.

“You’re early.”

John nods. “Yeah.” Realises. “Oh. Were you planning something?”

Sherlock looks at him for a beat and then nods. Turning to hang up the towel, the ring glows, limpid, and John’s throat tightens. Aches. His mouth tugs up, and his cheek muscles twinge. Sherlock says, “I thought we could go out.”

“Where?” John can feel the heaviness in his legs. It was a long day. An outbreak of flu and every sniffle or stomach gripe had ended up coming through their doors, people wanting to ‘catch it early’. And John had had to examine them all and then tell most that there was bugger all he could do. He’d like to take a shower, watch a bit of telly, eat the Chinese. Kiss Sherlock in their bed. Last night it had been frantic. Frottage and then a bit of cuddling after. John wants to take his time, go slow. Inside the bedroom to his right, the rain pummels the glass. John wiggles his toes in his wet socks, his shirt pulling tight and damp across his shoulders.

“I was thinking _Au Lit_. I reserved a room.”

John stiffens. He can feel his face, his spine, go rigid. It’s involuntary, but immediate. His teeth clench. Frustrated with himself, he wills his jaw to relax.

“ _Au Lit_ ,” John repeats, slowly, unfolding his arms.

Sherlock is studying him. Gleaning what, John doesn’t know. His eyebrows are knit. “You don’t want to go.”

“Is that the gift?” John asks, not wanting to ruin whatever Sherlock had planned, but also feeling reluctant to leave. Reluctant to go out again, into the storm. Reluctant to go there.

“No.” Sherlock cocks his head, eyes boring into John’s. “I thought I would give it to you there.”

“Could you give it to me here?” John asks, scraping his palm over the back of his neck. His wet scrubs chafe against his shins. His skin itches, hair standing on end. A chill breaks down his spine, splinters, lodges in his knees, his ankles, his toes.“To be honest, I’m knackered.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow, but it’s true. John is tired.

John meets his gaze, but he knows that Sherlock can see that there’s something else there. John hopes he doesn’t ask him why because he’s not even sure he knows. It’s something to do with being caught unawares. Unprepared. That space. He remembers that uncomfortable feeling of not belonging. It’s irrational, he can see that, but still… he’s tired. It’s true.

Sherlock blinks. Comes forward. “We can stay.” Leans down. “If that’s what you want.”

His lips are warm and taste of tap water. Soap. Skin.

“Mmmm…” Sherlock smacks his lips. “Ginger nuts.” Another slow kiss that leaves John feeling boneless. He sways. “And Orange Pekoe.”

John touches Sherlock’s bicep, curls his fingers around it, holds him there. Close.

“You had tea at work before coming home.”

“What else?”

Sherlock noses down, behind John’s ear, sniffing. Tickling. John giggles and the sound bounces off the tile. Trills.

“London,” Sherlock says. Parsing, “Rain. Petrol. Cigarette smoke. Woodsmoke. Asphalt. Some old woman’s moldering Yorkie. The Tube was a nightmare. You walked home.”

“Go on then.” John’s eyes are closed, but he can feel Sherlock smile against his throat. He can’t resist the opportunity to show off.

“It was busy today. You’re dead on your feet, so, short staffed. You skipped lunch to help out. A small child vomited on you, hence why you changed into scrubs. I like them by the way.” Sherlock is making his way down John’s shoulder now, his hands roaming over John’s arse, groping him through the thin, wet cotton.

John loses the plot, goes up on his toes as Sherlock bends him, arching back, pressing into him. “Like what?”

“The scrubs.”

“Oh.”

“You should filch a pair, keep them here.”

“Keen on playing doctor are you?”

“You could give me a full exam.”

“Oh, I could, could I? Lucky me.”

“You brought home dinner. Chinese from the smell of your arm.” John laughs again. Sherlock is holding his arm out to the side and nuzzling the inside of his elbow. John had held the bag of take away in the crook of his arm on the walk home. He’s not sure why he’s surprised.

“What’d I get?” Best to give him a bit of a challenge.

Sherlock inhales deeply. Clucks his tongue.

“Too easy. You got what we always get. Salt and Pepper crab. Crispy duck. Hot and sour soup. Kung pao chicken. Rice. Toffee Banana.”

“And…”

Sherlock bends back down, then snaps his eyes back up at John, wide with a mixture of triumph and disbelief.

“Pig’s knuckles.” He straightens up. “But I thought you said…”

“What? That they’re disgusting? Or maybe was it that I said, never, _never ever_ again?”

Sherlock nods.

John shrugs.

They’re both grinning.

Their smiles bump when Sherlock leans down again. John’s blood bubbles, light, airy. Happy.

“Do you want to eat first or…” Rock-rough down John’ spine.

“Let me take a shower, yeah?” Said into the space between their lips. Their noses brush. “Don’t. Just. Just wait for me. In there. And then we can. I’ll just be a mo’. All right?”

Sherlock pulls back. Nods. “All right.”

Easy.

Simple.

John showers. Sherlock shaves. Primps. Does whatever black magic to his curls that needs doing. Possibly he sacrifices a lamb to some ancient diety who controls frizz and split ends. When John gets out Sherlock is in the bedroom thumbing at something on his mobile.

“How was your day?”

Sherlock doesn’t look up. He’s lying in bed, the duvet tucked loosely around his waist, typing in that manic way he has, fingers tapping emphatically at the glass screen as if he can communicate his irritation through sheer force alone. He looks peeved. It must be Lestrade then. A case.

“Dead girl. Poisoned probably. Her date claims to have kissed her once and then she dropped dead.”

“Must have been a good kiss,” John says, dropping his towel on the ground and lifting the covers as Sherlock rolls his eyes and murmurs something about the cleverness of poisoned lipstick. Something tugs, some inconsequential pop culture reference that flits away; John isn’t paying attention. He’s distracted by the feel of their skin sliding against each other. The way Sherlock rolls and pushes into him, the surge of his large, long, warm body as he rolls John halfway beneath him, and gasps slightly as John’s chilled legs tangle with his.

“You’re freezing.”

The thump of his phone on the nightstand is gratifying.

So is the way his mouth dips to find John’s and the sweet plaintive sound he makes in the back of his throat as they kiss.

It’s unhurried.

Soft lips, wet tongues.

Just like John wanted.

Is there anything so perfect as a slow, soft kiss with the man you want to spend the rest of your life with? That wants to spend the rest of his life with you?

John doesn’t think so. It feels like every Christmas wish he’s ever made come true.

“Does it ever go away?” Whispered as Sherlock trails his lips over John’s stubble stippled cheeks. Brushing. John flashes, wracked by tiny hot shivers. Quicksilver, they dart through him.

“What?”

“This.” His big hands on John’s back, deft fingers slipping down his spine. His mouth, wet and soft and hungry, moving over John’s. “This, this. This _ravening_. It’s mad.”

John laughs. Sucks in a sharp breath as Sherlock nips at his bottom lip. Then sucks gently at the burn. His gravelly voice rumbles down into John’s chest. “I prepared myself in the shower, thinking about you. I think about you all day. I want you all the time. I’ve added a new room. A new room filled only with all the ways I want to make you come. Everywhere I want to kiss you. All the expressions and sounds and smells I want to collect. All the ones I already have. At this rate I’ll have to add a wing. I’m constantly driven to distraction. Does it stop? It must. It has to, but god, I want to live in that room.”

John tips his head back, bares his throat to Sherlock’s marauding lips, rakes his fingers through Sherlock’s soft hair, wraps his legs around Sherlock’s, scrapes their leg hair together, runs the soles of his feet up and down the cool stems of his ankles. “It doesn’t stop exactly, but it…that urgency, it lessens, I suppose. Over time.”

“Is it the same for you?”

“Yeah. Course.”

They kiss and John melts. Melts into Sherlock, into their bed. The spare light from the bathroom at his back, the smell of their bodies, the salt and starch and copper scents rubbed into the soft linen, the faintest hint of lavender from the fabric softener lingering at the edges, and the quiet cadence of the rain muddling the sounds of the world outside.

“The gift I made for you, I started it while I was abroad.”

The words are a warm skirr of breath against John’s throat. The blue-black hair at the nape of Sherlock’s neck slips between his fingers, threads of night-dark silk. John’s skin will smell of clove and spice and decadent night blooming flowers for hours after. Somewhere in the distance, a horn blares. The rain falls and falls, sheets of silver pouring down the glass.

“I didn’t have my violin so I couldn’t practice, but I composed it. It might have been the one thing that kept me sane.”

“You composed a piece for me?” John asks, his chest expanding and constricting at once.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to play it for me?”

Sherlock shakes his head.

“I recorded it.”

John squints at the ceiling. _Recorded it…_

“I have this toy…”

_Ah._

“Ok.”

“It’s a pulsator. It, um, oscillates. On it’s own.”

John waits.

“And it can be synced to a music source. So that it…oscillates in time to the—“

“Music.”

“Exactly.”

“Why’re you blushing?”

“I’m not blushing!”

“Yes, you are. Your cheeks are hot. I can feel it on my skin. You’re blushing.”

“I’m not.”

“Ok. Well, there’s no need to feel shy. It all sounds lovely to me.”

“Are you certain?”

“Absolutely. I can’t wait to be fucked by your music. That you composed. _For me_. Incidentally, what are you going to be doing while I’m busy with that?”

“You’re teasing.”

“I’m really not.”

John shifts down until they’re lying face to face again. He nudges his lips against Sherlock’s reluctant ones.

“I thought I would,” Sherlock says, between John’s ardent interruptions, “watch and—“

“That sounds boring. I think we can do better than that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’ll come to me. I can be rather brilliant myself when I put my mind to it. Now, how did you want to start?”

“I suppose we’ll need to get you ready for the toy.”

“A bit girthy is it?”

Sherlock laughs at that, snorting in an endearing way that makes John smile. His cheeks, bruised with happiness.

“Yes, as it so happens.”

“Give me your hand.”

“Why?”

“Just. Here.”

John takes Sherlock’s wrist and drags his hand up until his fingertips are resting against John’s lips.

He touches out his tongue.

Sherlock shivers against him. A cataract of sensation that travels down John’s body in a tingling rush of goosebumps.

John does it again.

“These were the first things I fantasised about.”

“You are inordinately enamoured of my hands.”

“They’re obscene.”

“I think you mean exquisite.”

“That too.”

“They’ve made you practically rapturous on occasion, on your blog. People have noticed.”

“Shut up.”

“What? You can let me preen a bit can’t you?”

“All right then, preen away, but I think I know of a way to keep you quiet.”

John sucks the tips of Sherlock’s middle and ring fingers inside his mouth.

The pads of his fingers are rough with printed whorls and ribbed with fine-edged callouses. John opens his mouth and runs his tongue down their length, tastes the bitter scrim of soap and the faintly metallic quality of his skin. John closes his lips and sucks them deeper, opening his throat and letting them glide until his lips brush the cool, gold band at the base. Sherlock breathes out shakily.

John bobs up and down.

Lets them slip out.

Sherlock wets John’s lips, drawing them back and forth across the loose purse of John’s kiss, before pushing back inside.

“Wetter,” he says, voice growing huskier, deeper, more commanding, and John moans softly around him. “I’m going to give you both at once. You think you can do that for me? Take them both?”

John nods, pressing closer until his leg is slung over Sherlock’s hip and his cock is pressed into Sherlock’s belly. He winds his tongue around Sherlock’s fingers.

When Sherlock pulls his fingers out and slips them between John’s legs, John is a mess. Saliva cooling on his cheeks and chin, a trickle tracking down the side of his neck. But he can’t care because Sherlock is circling, circling, circling. Maddeningly little circles that wind John up before they

  
                                                                                                            nu         d ge

  
just

inside.

A burst of feeling, sharp and sudden, cuts up his spine. He gasps, breathless, into Sherlock’s ear.

“You know what would work better?” John breathes, pushing down, yielding. Yeilding. Opening. Opening up around where Sherlock is carving out a place inside him. “Your cock.”

“You want my cock?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I want it. I want it.”

“You can’t have it yet.”

John makes a sound in the back of his nose that is embarrassingly close to a whine. Sherlock kisses him quiet.

They’re soon sticking together, the air beneath the duvet hot and humid. Sherlock throws off the blanket and wets his fingers with the lube on the bedside table, returns them to John’s aching body. John rocks his hips mindlessly, rubbing the head of his cock against Sherlock’s, as Sherlock presses his fingers deep, stroking John’s prostate too lightly. Teasing. None of it’s enough. Pleasure shimmers just out of reach, mirage-like, diffuse.

John rolls his forehead against Sherlock’s, their breathes coming warm and quick between them. “Sher-lock. Fuck.”

“It’s good?”

“I need.”

“Need what?”

“More. I need. More.”

“Just a little longer.”

“No, no, now. I need your cock, now.”

“Bossy.”

“Please.”

Sherlock’s quiet, still pumping his fingers slowly, slowly, torturously slowly, inside John. John, his desperate heart pounding, hammering, yammering against his ribs, reaches between them and takes them in hand. Their cocks are slick with pre-come and sweat and glide against each other. John can’t fit them both in his hand at once so he drags his palm over the silky, plump heads. Opens his mouth against Sherlock’s and sucks on his tongue. John clenches around Sherlock and Sherlock groans, pushing his cock into John’s hand.

“Don’t you want to be inside me? I’m so open and wet for you.” John guides Sherlock’s cock down to where Sherlock’s fingers are stretching him open. John contracts his muscles again, squeezing. Squeezing.

That does it.

“Turn over.”

As John complies Sherlock gets the lube out off the bedside table. He clicks on the light. John hears the drawer open and close and something heavy hits the mattress behind him. John prickles, hair standing on end. He wonders what the toy looks like. What it will feel like to have it inside him, fucking him in time to Sherlock’s gift.

“Kneel up. Hands on the headboard.”

John obeys, spreading his knees on the mattress. The wood is smooth and chilled against his palms. The warmth from the room washes over him in counterpoint, supple waves of heat on his flushed skin.

“God,” Sherlock exhales, trailing a hand down the centre of John’s back. “I want a thousand different things right now.”

Two lube slicked fingers slip between John’s cheeks. Circling. Running over his swollen rim over and over. John lets his head fall forward, forehead pressed to the wall as his body ignites.

“I want to fuck you and suck you and finger you and milk you and watch you be fucked all at once.”

A long, desperate rasp from John’s dry throat slips from his parted, panting lips as Sherlock’s fingers slide just inside.

He bows his back. Wriggles back. Whimpers.

Sherlock’s other hand slides into his hair and fists in the short strands. John’s head rises, scalp stinging, until he’s spitted and reined at once.

“I want my ankles wrapped around your neck and my arse stuffed with your cock. I want to come on your tongue. I want to lick you open, I want…” Sherlock breaks off, breathing hard, as he settles between John’s legs, knees pressed to the inside of John’s burning thighs, urging them wider. John can feel the plummy, wet head of Sherlock’s cock pressing against him as Sherlock’s fingers slip out to wet his shaft. Sherlock tugs on John’s hair and then wraps his hand around John’s throat as he tips it back against Sherlock’s shoulder, whispering, “I want you to sit on my cock.”

So John does.

Lowers himself down the slick hard length of him until he’s settled in Sherlock’s lap, deliciously full of cock, arse cupped by Sherlock’s long, hard thighs, his legs spread to either side. Sherlock’s palm is heavy on John’s Adam’s apple. He swallows and feels it ride, up and down against the heat of his hand.

Sherlock presses gently against his throat, pushing John to lean into him, back flush against his chest. John’s eyes slide shut as Sherlock swivels his hips, working the thick head of his cock against John’s prostate. Pre-come pulses from the slit of John’s erection and Sherlock wraps his hand around him, strokes up, smearing it into John’s throbbing skin. He turns his face and buries it in Sherlock’s neck, trembling.

“I want to hold your hands over your head and kiss you until you come. Just from kissing. Just from my mouth on yours.”

John groans, imagining it and then, hands braced for leverage, bounces, once, twice, three times, spearing himself, over and over and over, on Sherlock’s big cock. Their balls slap together and John cries out, lit up by the feeling, but then Sherlock slips his arm around John’s waist and holds him tight, grinding him down, shoving deep. He rubs his thumb over John’s leaking crown, circling slowly, as his hips thrust, so slowly, evening out the tempo. Circling. Circling. John can feel his orgasm start to gather, heat knotting at the tops of his thighs.

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock stills and John heaves against him, taking deep breaths. Squirming down and then rising up until the round head catches.

“Please. Oh, God.”

“Not so quick,” Sherlock says, licking into John’s open mouth as he tips it toward him. Pushes back up into him until he’s buried deep once more. Murmuring, “Do you feel like you’re ready for it?”

Christ.

John had almost forgotten.

“Yeah. Yes. I’m ready.”

They kiss a little longer. John twists, wraps his arm around Sherlock’s neck, kisses him deeply. His heartbeat slows, his breathing evens out. Sherlock slips out of him. Hands on John’s hips, he turns him. Piles the pillows and eases John down onto them so that he’s half propped up. His gaze tracks hungrily down the splay of John’s body, loose with languor, sprays of rose blushes blooming up and down his chest, sweat beading around his nipples, on his forehead, his cock, hard and wet, and curving against his stomach.

Sherlock sits back on his heels between John’s legs, flushed and happy, smiling down at him. John wishes for a camera. Wants to capture him like this. Pink and disheveled and utterly, utterly lovely. Sherlock runs his hands down John’s sides, over his hips, and down the outside of his thighs, and then back up again.

“I love you,” he says, his curls falling in his eyes. The ring catches against John’s hipbone and he reaches up for Sherlock, sinks both hands in his hair and brings him down to his mouth.

John wraps his legs and arms around him. Holds him.

Close.

Sherlock kisses down John’s throat. Down his chest, pausing to flick at his nipples. Drags his lips over John’s fluttering belly, licking up the salt. He pauses, looks up. John pets his hair. His shoulders. Cups his face. Sherlock turns and kisses his palm as he shifts up onto his hands and knees.

“We should go to Sussex for New Years,” John suggests, as Sherlock peppers wet kisses over his hips. Sherlock hums and it feels like butterflies rustling across his skin.

“We could invite Lestrade. This time of year is always hard on him. We’ll have Mrs. Hudson too of course. Maybe Molly as well?”

Sherlock looks up at him with his eyebrows raised, his mouth a moue of displeasure. “Must we?”

John nods. “We could have a proper fete.”

Sherlock’s nose wrinkles.

“To celebrate…” John says, leading.

Bushy eyebrows flicker up.

“Our engagement…”

Clarity. Sherlock’s face smoothes out. “As long as Mycroft isn’t invited.”

“I think you spending Christmas Eve with him is enough.”

“I still think us spending Christmas Eve apart is unnecessary.”

John sighs. “Sherlock, we’ve been over this.”

“But do you really need to stay at Harry’s overnight? Couldn’t we meet—”

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock merely scowls for a moment before he bends and sucks John unceremoniously into his mouth.

The lush bow of his lips stretches out around him as Sherlock returns his fingers to John’s hole, plunging deep. John presses the inside of his thighs to Sherlock’s ears, digs his heels into his back, and bucks up, helpless. The heat pounds back and gathers in his navel, throbbing out through him. John can’t speak to warn him. He doesn’t want it to be over, but it feels too good. His mouth is sapped, his throat parched, closed against speech. Sherlock takes him deep and smears John against the back of his throat, the tight channel clenching around him. But then he’s gone, pulled up and off, and John is left panting, sticky and frustrated, his hands fisted in the sheets at his sides.

“Bastard,” John growls, as Sherlock merely smirks and pumps more lube into his hand, picking something up with the other.

It’s long and blue and ribbed with thick strips of silicon. It’s flared at the base and has buttons on the bottom. Sherlock slicks it with lube, watching John from beneath his lashes.

“I originally planned to give this to you at Queermas,” Sherlock says, shuffling closer until John’s legs are draped over his knees.

“Queermas?” John asks, distracted, peering down the length of his body to have some warning as to what Sherlock is going to do next.

“It’s the annual Christmas party at Au Lit. I was going to take you and make you wear it while we danced. The techno music would have been quite transcendental.”

“Jesus, Sherlock, we’re a little old to be going clubbing aren’t we?”

“Maybe you are, but I’m certainly not. And that’s the brilliance of _Au Lit_ , it caters to a wide array of ages. We would in no way stand out.”

John makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat.

“So what changed your mind?”

Sherlock glances up from where he is positioning the pulsator between John’s legs.

“You proposed.” Sherlock smiles briefly, a flash of distilled joy that lights up his entire face, before he reapplies himself to his task, brow furrowing, tongue peaking out the side of his mouth. “And I thought that this could only enhance my gift to you. You would be able to actually feel the music inside your body. Every quiver of my bow. The acoustics in room 203 are phenomenal. Surround sound. That was why I reserved it for us tonight.”

“You didn’t have to give me a gift, you know.” John shifts a little against the pillows at his back, scooting his arse closer to Sherlock, he really doesn’t want to talk about _Au Lit_ anymore.

“I’ve wanted to give this to you for some time.”

Sherlock’s eyes meet John’s, two chips of clear blue glass.

John holds his gaze as the head of the toy touches his skin. John bears down and Sherlock presses it slowly inside. They both exhale together as it slides home, the ribbing catching John’s hole in tiny bursts that fizz out to snap in his fingertips and toes.

Once it’s fully seated Sherlock takes up a small black remote and across the room on his dresser top his Bose comes to life. There are two speakers high up in the corners. Sherlock likes to turn off the lights and listen to music when he’s thinking sometimes. John has come home countless times to Beethoven, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, booming through the apartment, the walls vibrating with fine tremors.

“It’s a nocturne,” Sherlock explains softly, something like self-consciousness etched in the lines around his eyes. “Entirely derivative of Sarasate, I admit, but with my own touches here and there.”

“I’m sure it’s going to be wonderful,” John soothes, resisting the urge to move and adjust the way the toy is lying inside him.

Sherlock presses a button on the remote and then lays in it down. Just as the first ringing note of his violin sings out from the speakers he reaches down and turns the dildo on.

John doesn’t know enough about music to accurately describe the technique Sherlock uses. He couldn’t tell you what a nocturne is, or who Sarasate was, aside from the fact that he’s Sherlock’s favourite violinist. He can’t comment on bowing or fingering and if a note falls afoul, he is none the wiser.

And yet, John can feel it.

All of it.

It’s them.

It’s their story.

The beginning is a blitz of sound, it cracks like a gunshot through John. A first glance in a lab, a bullet breaking through glass, it begins with a bang. They are chasing evil men through London’s warren of streets, their hearts are pumping, there is danger surrounding them, adrenaline burning through their veins, the stars are wheeling, the ground careening, it is fleet, it is thrilling, a quickening, a spark catching. There is a bond being knit. It is tremulous and fragile and Sherlock plays it with great care. The way the music trembles and breaks and crashes forward in turns, as strangers turn into friends, it is tentative, uncertain, furtive, inexplicably sweet. It is trust. It is love. And through it runs a tensile thread of doubt. It was that subtle misunderstanding of each other. Close, but kept at arms length. It makes the notes taughten towards something brittle. And then. Loyalty is tested. Again and again. The pool, Moriarty, Irene, Baskerville, the fall. Tensile, stretched thin, the thread between them is perilously close to breaking. John is transported back, with each pulse of the vibrator inside him, with each pull of the bow over the strings, John is living it again.

The silence is sudden.

It resounds.

It shatters.

The thread has snapped.

An event so catastrophic that it sucks up all the air and light in the room, in the universe. It is a vacuum, it is cataclysm.

It is grief.

John realises, dimly, in the absence of sound, that the dildo inside him has also stilled. John gasps for air, his fingers pressed into the mattress as if to ground himself, but he is spinning in darkness. He is lost. He is sundered.

His eyes fly open and there is Sherlock, above him.

Alive.

No longer on the other side of something John can’t scale.

Did it take two years apart to crack them open? To turn them inside out? Did they have to hit bottom in order to see each other properly? To set aside all the notions of who they were and what they did and what was allowed for them to ask for and start again? Is that what growing up was? To have the sense to put yourself back together in a truer way than before you were broken?

John sobs, in relief, in pain, he’s not entirely sure, but he knows that he has to touch him. He reaches for him.

“Sherlock.”

The first elegiac notes stir the air and John freezes, hands outstretched, but empty.

Empty.

It’s the wind scraping barren plains. A landscape bleak and razed.

It’s the way John had felt after the funeral: ephemeral. His mind unable to cope, amorphous. Numb. Hollow.

It was shock.

Then the crash. Reality, barging in. A dirge, the violin wails. And then sinks. Foundering. The shouldering of a weight so ponderous, John still doesn’t know how he carried it for so long.

The vibrator thuds inside him, a heart heavy beat. It feels like the squeeze of a muscle in torque, a force building behind a dam.

John wants to say: _Stop, take it out. I can’t bear it._

But his mouth works and no words come out.

He inches his fingers down the bed until he finds Sherlock’s wrist. He grips it. He tugs.

Drowning.

He is drowning.

Sherlock breaks over him, a wave of heat on John’s sepulchre skin. John holds him.

Close.

And it feels like breathing underwater. His lungs expand. He comforts himself with the corporeal weight of Sherlock as the music swells around them, inside him. He can’t hide from it.

“I didn’t know,” John says, his lips tucked against Sherlock’s ear. “I didn’t know it was like that for you too. When you were gone.”

Sherlock makes a broken noise in the back of his throat.

They are both crying.

When they kiss, there is salt on their lips.

They kiss and it somehow eases them through the worst of it.

Three years.

A hospital room.

Knees pressed to London’s pavement as John tells him he wants to come home.

The music changes again.

Lilting. Cheerful.

It’s hope.

It’s tentative once more, reminiscent of the beginning, when they were finding their way.

As the tempo ticks up, the vibrator pulses in time.

John’s confession.

Their first kiss.

Giddy champagne notes flit through the room.

Sherlock reaches down, watching John intently, as he guides John’s cock to his body’s entrance and takes him slowly inside.

He stretches above him, drenched gold in the lamplight, as the music soars, and he sinks down. His hands rest behind him on John’s thighs. He is a bow pulled taut, neck arced, head tipped up toward the ceiling.

John fits his hands to Sherlock’s hips as he begins to rock.

The music.

The music.

It’s them.

It’s them together.

When they’re moving together like this.

Like this, John thinks.

We love each other like this.

John comes first. Toes curled into the sheets so hard they cramp. He tears the toy from his body as the music mellows into something sweeter. Honey notes drip down on them as, with his mouth on Sherlock's, and his fingers inside him, slippery with his own seed, Sherlock comes with a soft cry on John's chest.

They clean each other.

They kiss.

They kiss and kiss and kiss.

And when their stomachs begin to groan they wrap up in their robes and heat up the Chinese. John assiduously ignores the way Sherlock crunches the pig's knuckles between his teeth. They pass the cartons back and forth between them, stealing bites from chopsticks as they flirt and joke and rib. After, Sherlock rubs John's feet as he googles possible poisons and John nods off to the telly.

He wakes in the predawn light to snow gathered on the windowsill and Sherlock in his arms, snoring gently, the afghan pulled over them. John doesn't move, just lies in the stillness. The lights on the mantle glow, nestled in ever-green, reflected twice over in the mirror. John burrows his nose into Sherlock's hair, pulls him in.

Close. 

As close as they can get.

Outside, the snow falls, thick and quiet, as John falls back asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Margo. Thank you Violet. <3 <3 <3 <3


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For GWWG, who let me use her amazing prompt, _wool burn_. Presto! I now have a new kink! Thank god for brilliant fandom friends.
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. If anyone notices anything wrong with what I've described here, please let me know! I would be happy to make changes and grateful to you for pointing them out.

“Dr. Watson!”

John keeps walking, speeding up his steps incrementally as he rounds a corner, hoping it will be deterrent enough for whoever is trying to ruin his lunch break.

“Dr. Watson!”

John ducks his head, reaches, grasps the door knob. Turns it.

“Oi, John!”

John sighs. Stares for a moment at the break room door. So close. He was so close to being home free. Slowly, he turns. Allison, donned with a bright red Santa cap and a necklace of jingle bells, comes tinkling down the hallway towards him.

“Sorry, but I’ve got one more for you before your lunch.”

“Can’t it wait?” John asks, checking his watch. He’s already an hour overdue and he’d splurged on sushi from the expensive place next door.

“Your fish will keep,” Allison says, looking pointedly at the bag in John’s hand before arching one eyebrow at him. “This patient won’t. He’s asked for you specifically.”

Resigned John shoves the sushi in the fridge with a menacing DO NOT TOUCH IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE written on it in sharpie. Allison is waiting for him in the hallway with a chart. John falls into step beside her and tries to school the frown from his mouth as Allison swings open the door to Room 5.

“What’s this?” John asks, hurrying forward, the prickle of irritation replaced with the sickening lurch of worry instantly. “What’s happened? Are you hurt?”

Sherlock, dressed in black trousers and his dark, forest green button down, sits on the examine table, legs swinging, rolling down the right arm sleeve. His eyes flick up to meet John’s briefly before Allison says from the doorway, “Just a routine check, Dr. Watson. Nothing to worry about. Took his vitals and did a blood draw.”

John breathes out, his hands unclenching a bit from where they had landed on his hips. “Thanks, I can take it from here.”

Allison clears her throat.

John looks over at her.

She raises both her eyebrows and John shakes his head, “I don’t—“

“I can’t believe you neglected to mention that you’re engaged!”

Fuck.

John looks at Sherlock whose head is bent over his cuff, expression hidden.

John glances up at her and smiles, sheepish. “I was going to.” Glancing back down at Sherlock, who is smoothing the button through it’s hole with intent care that belies the fact that he is listening for John’s response. John’s ears burn. He shrugs. “It just happened a day ago. I suppose I was waiting for the right time.”

“The right time?!” Allison exclaims, shaking her head. “Men! As if we wouldn’t all be absolutely thrilled you two had finally stopped dancing about each other and finally got on with it! We are, you know, thrilled for you both. If you’ll allow it, Marta and I would love to put together a little shower or—”

Sherlock straightens, shoots the cuff down over his wrist. His eyes are cool, unreadable. John’s cheeks flush. “That’d be great, really, but I’ve got to—“

“Right-o, that’s my cue to shove off then. Nice to see you, Sherlock. I’ll put the express on those results just as you requested.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock says, his eyes still locked with John’s. Placid. Clear.

“Bye then.”

“Yeah, cheers. Thanks again.”

The door hasn’t even clicked into it’s latch before John is asking, “What’s going on? What results?”

“Routine, just as she said. Blood pressure. Listened to my heart. All of which were perfectly _normal_ by the way.”

“Perfect. That’s wonderful. But what tests is she running on you that you need express results on?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Then tell me what they are.”

“It’s just my monthly drug test.”

“You’re still doing those? Is Mycroft still making you? I can talk to him, you know. It’s an invasion of privacy and—”

“No, they’re for me.”

“Oh.” John knits his brow, surprised. “Why?”

Sherlock shrugs. “They’re like…a benchmark.”

“A benchmark.”

“Yes. A, participation award, if you will.”

John is lost. “Participation in what?”

Sherlock shrugs again. He looks bored. “Life.”

“You need a monthly award for _living_?”

“It’s a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?” John is trying really hard not to lose his cool, but he can feel the urge to shout building in his lungs.

“That I’ve made it this far. That I can keep going.”

That deflates John. He feels his stomach twist. Fear curdled, sour in the back of his throat. “Are you having that difficult a time managing? I thought—“

“No, I’m doing well—“

“Because I thought that you were doing much better. Do we need to call your therapist? Set up a check in?”

“ _We_ don’t need to do anything. _We_ are doing just fine. I told you, there’s nothing to worry about.”

John snaps. “Then why the bloody hell are you here? At _my_ surgery? Getting tests run by _my_ bloody nurses?”

“Calm down.”

“I’m perfectly calm.”

“John.”

“What?”

“Your vein is bulging.”

John rubs at his forehead as if to erase the evidence. “No, it’s not.”

“It is. Will you take a breath for me, please? You are getting upset over nothing.”

“Then you need to do a better job of explaining things.”

“I needed the tests run. I wanted to see you. It’s really that simple.”

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yes.” John lets Sherlock take his hand, lets himself be tugged forward, until he’s standing in between Sherlock’s knees.

“I was thinking about last night.”

“You were.”

“I was.”

“It was pretty perfect, I have to say.”

“It was. It was perfect and then I’ve had to be at the Yard all morning for _nothing_ and it's been awful _._ ”

“And what? You needed a bit of cheering up?”

Sherlock nods.

“Was it the lipstick case? What happened?”

Sherlock scowls. “Aortic aneurysm. Complete coincidence. The girlfriend had nothing to do with it. And do you know the most infuriating part?”

Christ, he’s adorable.

John bites back a smile. “What?”

“The name of her lipstick was, get this, Poison Apple!”

“Missed opportunity,” John commiserates.

Sherlock grumbles something incoherent under his breath.

“What was that?”

Sherlock fairly explodes. “I ran tests on the lipstick. With a name like that, I thought it would be simple for god’s sake! Think of it John! The title for your story lay right there! It was brilliant! I analysed it for every poison imaginable, every drug, every chemical, and nothing. Nothing! They even met on-bloody-line! But no, she didn’t go home with the victim with the intent to kill. She went home with the victim after what, by all accounts, was a perfectly lovely evening, snogged her once, and the bleeding idiot died of it.”

John chuckles.

“Kissing, John! Kissing!”

“I told you it must have been a good kiss.”

Sherlock huffs, forehead crinkled, looking thoroughly put out.

He does need a bit of cheering up.

John thinks for a minute and then, struck by some silly inspiration, unwinds his stethoscope from around his neck and reaches forward to tuck the ear buds into Sherlock’s ears.

Sherlock stills, looking at John as if he’s lost his mind. “What are you doing?”

John undoes the top three of Sherlock’s shirt buttons, baring his chest. John puts the bell into Sherlock’s hand and guides it up until it rests on Sherlock’s pec, just right of center.

“The first sound you’ll hear is the low, prolonged lub,” John says, his hand resting light on the back of Sherlock’s as Sherlock listens to the beat of his own heart. “That’s the beginning of the ventricular contraction. That’s when the heart pumps blood out of the chambers and into the arteries. The systole.” Sherlock’s eyes are on John’s. “The mitral and tricuspid valves close and that’s the sound you hear. Do you hear it?” Sherlock swallows and nods.

“The second sound is sharper, a bit higher pitched. ‘Dup’. That’s the end of the systole, when the aortic and pulmonary valves close.  You hear it?”

John leans in, bracing his hands on Sherlock’s knees, and Sherlock nods again, pulling in a long, shallow breath.

“Imagine the night we met.” John drops his voice, lets it grow deeper, rougher, as his lips hover beside Sherlock’s ear. “Imagine instead it was a first date. Imagine it was going well. Imagine me walking you home after dinner. And us pausing to say good night on the front stoop.

“Imagine me stepping in close, and pressing a kiss just…” John teases his breath over Sherlock’s jaw. “…here.”

Lets his lips skim up across his cheekbone.

Sherlock's lashes drop, half shut. He shivers.

John pulls just far enough away so that Sherlock can look down at John’s lips, just millimetres from his own.

“And here.”

John leans in and drifts another light kiss across his other cheek.

Sherlock’s breathing hitches and then rushes out against John’s neck as he pulls back.

“Your body will be releasing adrenaline, testosterone, phenylethylamine. All of which make your heart beat faster.”

John leans back in.

“And faster.”

Sherlock’s breath is hot on his mouth. They’re so close John can see the translucent freckles on Sherlock’s nose, the short cinnamon bristles of his stubble.

“And _faster_.”

John just barely grazes Sherlock’s lips with his own.

“When someone’s heart rate increases, it sometimes feels like it skips,” John murmurs, running the tip of his nose down the bridge of Sherlock’s nose, over to nuzzle the side, “or flutters.”

John nudges down, over the sharp curve of his cheek to skate a kiss down Sherlock’s throat. His pulse thuds hard beneath John’s fingertips as John tips his chin back down.

“Sometimes it races, sometimes it feels like it’s _pounding_.”

John slips his hands up to circle Sherlock’s waist, fingers curving up around his ribs, stepping in closer so that the tops of his thighs are pressed to the edge of the table. Sherlock slides down to meet him and then John can feel him, long and hard through his trousers. They both moan softly.

John kisses back up until their mouths are within range once more. Sherlock’s breath comes hard and fast and when his eyes meet John’s, they’re glazed and lost, pupil-shocked and dazed.

“Your endorphins will kick in. Make you feel blissed out. Your heart is beating quicker and quicker in response to your body’s arousal.”

Sherlock’s lips are flushed and swollen, plump and shiny and red. Fuck, what John wants to do to him.

John licks his lips and then presses his wet mouth to the parting blossom of Sherlock’s. Steals his breath. His heart will be tripping about in his ears, knocking against his chest. Sherlock’s hand is caught between them, the bell still pressed to his heart. John tilts his head and opens,

lets his tongue

slip

just

inside

the silky petal-soft seam of Sherlock’s lips.

John’s own heart kicks hard, his blood roaring in his ears as he licks gently, slowly, so slowly, into Sherlock’s mouth. John moves his hands up to cradle Sherlock’s head between them as he kisses him deeper, letting Sherlock’s tongue push inside his mouth, eager, desperate. John starts to pull away, letting his mouth soften, closing it slowly, until they’re kissing sweetly once more.

John steps back.

Can’t go far.

Sherlock’s hand is bunched in John’s shirtfront.

“ _God_.” Sherlock shudders, cheeks blushed to crimson. “I want you to bend me over that desk and fuck me through the wall.”

“You see now, how a kiss could cause an aneurism to burst?” John asks, smiling, ok, maybe just a bit smugly, as Sherlock unhooks the stethoscope from his ears and twists to set it on the table behind him.

Sherlock leans back on one arm, let’s his gaze travel down John’s body. His eyes are still dark and liquid, but they sharpen when they get to where John’s cock is distorting the line of his trousers, and the corners of his mouth quirk, smirking knowingly. He unknots his hand from John’s side and palms John’s erection before he has time to react.

“ _Ah_ ,” John gasps, pushing his hips forward involuntarily.

“You could, you know.” Leopard purr, dangerous and low.

“Could what?”

Christ, it feels incredible. The heel of Sherlock’s palm digging in, his long fingers cupping his shaft. John’s cock throbs and thickens under his hand.

“Could bend me over that desk and fuck me through the wall.”

“Jesus, Sherlock, I’m at _work_.” It jolts John back to reality for a moment and he wraps his hand around Sherlock’s wrist, tugging weakly, ineffectually.

“Imagine it,” Sherlock counters, using John’s own ploy against him, and fuck it if John doesn’t picture it, crystal clear in his mind.

“Imagine me spread out across all that careful charting. Making a mess of it. Imagine my trousers pushed down around my thighs and my arse filling your hands as you pulled me apart and spread me open.”

“Sherlock.” John shakes his head, his grip tightening on where Sherlock is stroking him through the wool.

John should stop him.

There are sounds on the other side of the door.

Patients in the hall, being led to their appointments. Banal chatter, a high-pitched cheerful laugh.

Anyone could open the door at any moment.

Allison, could…come back…

“Imagine fingering me until I’m moaning. You’ll have to put your hand over my mouth to muffle it, John, I won’t be able to help it. You’re a genius with your hands. You’ll fuck me open until I’m hanging onto the desk for dear life, making me beg for your cock. _John_.”

And oh God, he’s sliding down off the table, isn’t he. He is. He’s sliding down and now he’s on his knees, looking up at John as his hand rhythmically opens and closes, rubbing up and down the line of John’s bulging erection through the thick charcoal grey wool.

Fuck.

Fuckfuckfuckfuck.

John needs to stop him.

He has to.

Right?

Yes.

Definitely.

He definitely, definitely should.

“Imagine how good it will feel to push inside me. How wet and tight I would be for you. Imagine how your thick cock will pry me open, how you’ll be able to watch yourself. Sliding in and out. Imagine how hard your heart will be beating then, John.”

Sherlock runs his face over the placket of John’s straining trousers, the wool abrading his cheeks and the tip of his nose scarlet. _Wool burn_ , John thinks wildly, _everyone, everyone will know now_. They’ll all know that Sherlock had been on his knees rubbing his nose and mouth into the scratchy fabric of John’s crotch, letting his breath seep through, hot and wet, until John is mad with it. Until he is fisting both his hands in Sherlock’s hair and dragging him closer, dragging him against him, rutting against his cheek like a damn animal.

And fuck, there’s the sound of his zipper being drawn down, but maybe if John doesn’t open his eyes, maybe if he can just let go of Sherlock’s hair, and take one step back…

The cold air in the office pours over the heated head of his cock like cool silk as Sherlock draws him out into the open and John gasps and gasps for air.

“Imagine the desk banging into the wall as you fuck me hard. You’d leave bruises on my hips and I wouldn’t even have to touch myself. I’d come off just from your cock alone, John.”

“Sherlock.” John tries to sound commanding, but it comes out wavering, like a plea.

Sherlock’s hand wraps itself around him, engulfing him in the heat of his palm and John thrusts forward, shivering, eyes still shut tight against the sight.

“People would come in to see what the racket was, and there’d you be, buried balls deep in my arse, your hands in my hair just like now, fucking me hard, and you wouldn’t be able to stop, it’d feel too good, and God, John, I’d be screaming your name as you came inside me while everyone watched…”

John opens his eyes and looks down and his heart almost stops.

Sherlock gazes back at him, the picture of innocence, flirting at him with his lashes, as if he isn’t on his knees slowly wanking John’s aching prick good and slow. It's obscene. John's cock standing out from his fly, thick and red. It distorts the proportions, makes him seem enormous. Makes him feel bigger, filling Sherlock's hand.

“Is your heart beating fast now, John?”

The bastard.

The absolute bastard.

“You—“

“Faster?”

“You can’t—“

“What about now?”

John’s certain he won’t survive it when Sherlock pouts his lips and runs them across the fat, plummy head of John’s cock, spreading the moisture from his leaking slit across the red bow of his lips, as he looks up at John with glinting, mischievous glee at getting to take his revenge.

“It’s just a kiss, John, but maybe you're right, maybe it can make your heart burst.”

Oh, fuck.

Oh, Jesus buggering Christ.

Sherlock kisses the crown again, slippery, satiny, slick, his tongue flickering out against the underside, teasing at John’s frenulum, at the sensitive ridge of his vein. His hand pumps, working John’s foreskin up and down his shaft as John pulses, dripping precome onto his lips with each pass.

There’s a bang outside, someone has dropped something, and John jumps, his eyes skittering to the door, every muscle tensed. Endorphins cascade through him, adrenaline spiking, the thrill of being caught, the dread of being caught, the exciting illicitness of the act itself, John is buzzing with it all. John thinks about stopping, about stepping back, letting the commotion in the hall move on.

But Sherlock, true to his word, doesn’t stop. He just runs the tips of his tongue around and around the tip of John’s cock as he pulls at him with his big fucking hand and then, then with the other, cups John’s balls and _tugs_.

Lightning fizzles up John’s spine and he comes

comes without warning, a sudden sluice of pleasure slicing him open,

comes so hard he sees proverbial stars burst behind his eyes,

comes

and

comes

and

comes.

Come striping up Sherlock’s cheek and smearing across his lips, still kissing John’s cock, before he opens and John staggers forward a step, feeding the head of his cock into the heat of Sherlock’s mouth and spilling the rest down his throat.

John is left shaking, trembling, with his head hanging limp on his neck, eyes closed as Sherlock zips John back into his trousers, none the worse for wear, and rises to fetch a wet flannel for his face. He comes back over, and John leans into him, resting his forehead against Sherlock’s chest.

John feels Sherlock’s hand settle on the back of his neck, the other resting in the small of his back. John turns his head, pressing his cheek to Sherlock’s heart which thumps slow and even beneath his ear.

“What the bloody fuck was that?”

Sherlock chuckles and it rumbles against John’s cheek.

“I don’t know. I really wasn’t planning on shagging you when I came by.”

John laughs and tips his head up.

Sherlock glows down at him. His eyes are creased in a smile, his cheeks are flushed, a raw patch burning on one side from where he had scraped it on John’s trousers, and his hair is a disheveled writhing mass of curls.

“Do you want me too…” John lets one hand drift down between them suggestively.

But Sherlock shakes his head no. “Tonight,” he says, giving John a quick kiss and then moving to gather his coat from the hook on the wall.

“What’s tonight?” John asks, collapsing slightly against the examination table to relieve the pressure on his wobbly knees.

“It’s a surprise,” Sherlock says, smirking again and looking unbelievably rakish and handsome as he does it.

“Give me a hint?”

Sherlock winds his blue scarf around his throat and gives John the You’re an Idiot™ look. John really really hates that look. Detests it. Would like to never have to see it again.

“What? What have I missed?”

“My chart.”

“What about it?”

“That’s the clue.”

“O-kay…?”

Sherlock bends down and kisses him once more. “You know, you’re adorable when you’re confused.”

“You know what? You can fuck right off.”

Sherlock smooths his hands over his curls as he turns, then wriggles his fingers through them, fluffing them up. They fall, like magic, into place. “See you later.”

“Yeah, if you’re lucky,” John grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Won’t work. You’re cute when you’re cross too. Enjoy the sushi!” Sherlock calls over his shoulder as he opens the door and swirls through, disappearing into the hallway.

John narrows his eyes at the empty doorway.

_The chart…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try really hard to finish this fic by Christmas. It feels like an impossible goal right now but I'm going to give it my best shot. Any cheerleading or ball busting is appreciated. <3 <3 <3


	8. Chapter Eight

John has worked himself into a proper rage by the time he shoves his key into the lock of 221B.

A mixture of fear and shame and frustration, it turns to anger, boils his stomach, sets hard in his jaw, his teeth tightly clenched. He stomps loudly up the stairs, the two cases slung over his shoulder swinging heavily into his thigh with each step.

He doesn’t stop to hang up his coat or remove his shoes. He walks directly through into the sitting room and lets the bags drop with a satisfyingly loud bang.

He takes a deep breath, turns, and…

“Oh, god damn it.”

“Hello, John.”

“No.”

“What?”

John shuts his eyes and drops his head into his hand, rubbing at his fringe.

“What’s wrong?”

“Stop it. Stop it right now.”

“Stop what?”

John gestures, eyes still closed.

“You’re not intrigued?”

“I know what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“Distracting me.”

“Well, if I am it seems to be working.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re unbuttoning your coat. And you’ve removed your shoes. If it was my nefarious plan for you to join me down here then it seems to be a smashing success so far.”

“I’m cold and I’m wet.”

“And?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?!”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’ve already won this round.”

“Well, I think I have, haven’t I?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I have stopped removing my clothing.”

“I’ll willingly admit to the veracity of that fact, but may I ask you why?”

“Because I know what you’re up to.”

“I—“

“And you’re not going to get away with it.”

“What? What am I not going to get away with?”

John points his finger at Sherlock, keeps his eyes trained on his face. Ignores what’s going on below. “You’re being coy. You flirting with me right now won’t work. And you can go ahead and stop stroking your big cock too, because as of right now, I’m immune.”

“Immune to me stroking my big cock? Or to me flirting with you?”

“Both.”

“Tell me then.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me how it’s going to go.”

“How what is going to go?”

“John. I’ve spent the better part of the afternoon setting up this little love nest for us. It’s our last night together before we both head our separate ways to spend Christmas Eve with our families, neither of whom we are particularly fond, and which I am, for the record, vehemently against.”

“Your objection has been noted and overruled.”

“As you’ve said. May I proceed?”

“You may.”

“Thank you. As I was saying. I spent hours searching for that tree over there in the corner, do you see it? That charming little fir strung with a veritable rainbow of lights and twinkling glass baubles?”

“I do.”

“Yes, well. You’re always complaining I’m not festive enough, and you’re right, I have never seen the sense in it until now.”

John almost, almost, loses his composure. He stiffens his spine instead, but his voice is gruff with emotion when he says, “I love it.”

“Yes, well, I’m glad, because I love you.”

“I love you too.”

John can see that Sherlock thought this would be enough for John to give in, and he’s looking up at John expectantly, but John stands his ground, his fingernails digging into his palms.

“So then, after I traipsed all over London in the sleet and snow—“

“I said stop that. It won’t work.”

“I’ll stroke my cock if I like, thank you very much. It’s extremely difficult to keep one’s composure when one’s fiancee is standing over one looking more handsome and commanding and fierce and strong than usual. A chap can’t be expected to withstand that kind of torture without taking things well in hand, can he?”

John stands a little straighter, puffing out his chest, and comes close to losing it again when Sherlock bites his lip and speeds up his pace a bit in response. “All right, carry on.”

A bit breathless, a bit husky, a lot absolutely delectable, he somehow manages to go on, “And then I decorated the damn thing and dragged this mattress in here. Made it up with all my finest, softest, most luxurious linen. Laid that fire there, took a shower, started to have a bit of a wank thinking about our little interlude this afternoon, and, hey presto, here you are at last.”

“Christ.” John turns, heads toward the kitchen to retrieve the scotch. “I need a drink.” The kitchen is neat. Sherlock had obviously tidied and Sherlock only tidied when he wanted something big from John.

“Oh, pour me one too will you?”

“I’m not sure either of us should be drinking tonight, but I suppose one can’t hurt.”

John pours them each a whiskey and, skirting the edge of the mattress, which is laid out before the hearth and piled with two fluffy duvets and all of their bedroom pillows, John hands one down to the Roman gladiator laid out naked on top of the marshmallow cloud of blankets.

“Thank you.”

John sinks down into Sherlock’s chair, which has been shoved out of the way.

They both sip.

Sherlock stretches out on his side, head propped up on his hand, studying John.

“I see you’ve brought home the difibrulator and your first aid kit. You’ve solved it then?”

“Solved what?”

“My little puzzle.”

“Sod your puzzle.”

“I know someone who needs to be sodded and it isn’t my fucking puzzle.”

“I won’t do it.”

“You won’t do what? Sod me?”

“Strangle you or whatever bloody thing you’ve got planned. I am not into life threatening sex play, thanks. Have you forgotten I was a combat surgeon? I’ve had quite enough of men dying under my hands. I don’t fancy my boyfriend being one of them.”

“Fiancee.”

“What?”

“I’m your fiancee now, not your boyfriend.”

“Yes, sorry. I don’t fancy my fiancee being one of them.”

“John.”

“What?”

“Look at me.”

“Why?”

“You know this would be loads easier if you just stripped and got down here with me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t—“

“Don’t what? Want to?”

“Don’t trust myself.”

“Don’t trust yourself how?”

“I’d do a lot. For you. But this. This is a hard no for me and I feel like if I get down there with you…”

“You’ll do it?”

“Yes. Or you’ll bloody well talk me into it.”

“You’d do it. To please me.”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust that I wouldn’t let you do something you were clearly uncomfortable with?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“No. I mean. Yes, I trust you.”

“Then…”

John blinks at him.

“Will you come down here, please?”

John stretches out his left leg, the edges of his socked toes just brushing the mattress. He swigs the whiskey, drinks it down, and shakes his head.

Sherlock reaches out and lightly clasps his foot.

“How about you give me one item of clothing for every question that I answer?”

John considers this.

“If you didn’t want me to freak out, why did you have those tests done at my work?”

“Because I knew if I didn’t you would have said no.”

“Why?”

“Because as a recovering habitual cocaine user, I am at risk of all kinds of heart conditions. And I knew you would be aware of this and want reassurance that my heart was sound.”

“You know I can’t actually reliably ascertain that information without more rigorous testing. Like an echocardiogram, for instance.”

“Well, needs must, John. I didn’t have time for all that.”

John chews on his lip.

“That was at least two questions.” Sherlock tugs tentatively on John’s socks and, slowly, John nods.

Sherlock sits up, crosslegged on the mattress, and draws John’s bare feet into his lap. John wiggles his toes and obligingly Sherlock tucks his thumbs into John’s arches and digs in.

John lets his eyes slip shut and groans at how good it feels, sinking lower in the seat.

“You could just come down here and lie on top of me.”

It’s not that it’s not extremely tempting. In fact, John feels a deep longing to do just that. It was a thing they did now. Him and Sherlock. When John had had a long day at the surgery. They’d go to bed early, at the weekend sometimes ridiculously so, before the winter sun had set, and Sherlock would lie down on his back and John would climb on top of him and Sherlock would rub John’s back and they would talk about their days.

John wants to.

Needs to.

But he’s not satisfied yet.

“What are we doing tonight that makes you think I’ll be worried about the soundness of your heart?”

It’s Sherlock’s turn to chew on his lip. His cheeks flood with a sudden, vivid blush.

“I want you to…overwhelm me.”

“Overwhelm you how?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Uh, uh, quid pro quo.”

John undoes his belt buckle, draws down his zip and lifts his arse off the seat.

Sherlock takes hold of John’s trousers and together, with some undignified wiggling, they get them off.

“All right, now answer. Overwhelm you how?”

“Do you know what a violet wand is?”

John shakes his head.

“It’s an electrical device that—“

“What do you mean, like electrocution?!” John exclaims, sitting bolt upright in the chair. Sherlock holds onto his feet, holds him steady.

“Well, no, it’s not strong enough for that. It’s more like static electricity.”

“What—“

“Nope. Off with your jumper first.”

John tosses his cardigan in the general direction of the sofa. The black leather is cool at his back through the thin layer of his shirt as he resettles. Sherlock cups his hands around John’s ankles, strokes up the back of his calves. It tickles the hair on his legs.

“How does it work?”

“I could show you…”

John shakes his head. “Explain it first, please.”

“Basically, it’s a device that conducts household current and creates sparks of electricity when applied to the body.”

“Is it safe?”

“It is entirely safe, I promise.”

“Then why all these bloody shenanigans with you getting a check up?”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow and John sighs, unbuttoning his shirt, and then, when Sherlock remains quiet, lips pressed resolutely together, removes his undershirt as well.

“Happy now?”

“No.”

They look at each other for one long drawn out moment and John can see that it’s true. Sherlock looks deflated compared to when John had walked in. His mouth is turned down at the corners and his eyes are pale and flat.

“John.”

John goes.

Straddles Sherlock’s lap and pushes him back until he’s lying on top of John’s old duvet with John on top of him. With a bit of clumsy manoeuvring they get the other duvet pulled over them both. John threads his arms under Sherlock’s shoulders, his face tucked into the velvet folds of Sherlock’s neck as Sherlock’s fingertips knead at the tight muscles of John’s back.

“I’ve made a mess of this, haven’t I?”

“No. Just, maybe, a bit more complicated than necessary.”

“Did you eat dinner? You’re very grumpy.”

“I had a sandwich from Pret, just like I do every time I have to work until 7.”

Sherlock nudges down and kisses John’s neck, tongue sweeping out to taste John’s jaw.

“Pret Pickle and cheddar, I think.” Sherlock licks him again and John drives his forehead into Sherlock’s, pushing him away. “And a Christmas tiffin too!”

“Prat,” John says affectionately, as they settle down once more.

They lie together for a moment, just breathing. The air is sweet with the resin of the fir tree. It burns, like a cinder, in the back of John’s nose. He’s not sure why it matters so much, Sherlock setting up this whole thing, but it does somehow. He pictures it in his mind. Sherlock leaving the surgery. Picking out a tree. Buying lights and ornaments. Decorating. It makes John’s chest feel too small to contain the feeling swelling inside him. Gratitude and love. The backs of his eyes grow hot and sting. No one’s ever done something so simple, and so kind, and so thoughtful for him before. John hadn’t expected it. Least of all from Sherlock.

“Thank you,” John whispers.

“For what?”

“For, this. All of it. I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions. I’m sorry I was angry with you.”

“Oh,” Sherlock exhales, sounding surprised. “It’s all right.”

Sherlock rubs his thumbs up and down John’s spine, undoing the stress of the day one knot at a time. John feels the last of his fear leave him as his breath slows. He sinks into Sherlock, into the feeling of being home. Home when the air outside is chill and biting. Home with the night outside, kept at bay by the warm lights of the fire, the lamplight, the fairy lights, the tree. Home and the day behind him. Home and in the arms of his love. Tucked beneath the duvet, their bodies make their own heat, a small, warm, soft haven. John opens his eyes again and lets his gaze drift to the tree, the fire place, and up to the mantle…

“Oh my god.” John sits up, shucks off the blanket, and scrambles to stand.

“What?” Sherlock props himself up on his elbows, peering up at John who reaches slowly towards something shining on the mantle.

John turns around, the treasure held in the cup of his hand. The foil glints merrily and crackles against his palm as he sprawls back down on his knees, spread either side of Sherlock’s thighs.

Sherlock lies back, one arm wrapped behind his head, smiling indulgently as John unwraps the chocolate orange and breaks off a slice with a crisp snip.

“Oh my god.” John groans, his knees clutching at Sherlock’s sides in pleasure as the bite breaks apart in his mouth and melts on his tongue.

Sherlock hums in agreement, eyes crinkled up, as John feeds him a slice. They chew, grinning like children.

“‘Minds me of my gran in Scotland. They were always in the toes of our stockings. You?” John says, breaking off two more pieces.

“My dad. He would start bringing them home as soon as they appeared in the markets. Mycroft used to hoard them. He’d still be eating them at the start of summer hols sometimes.”

John scrunches up his nose.

“That’s an abomination. They’re Christmas sweets.”

“Yes, well, that’s Mycroft. Perfectly abominable in every way.”

“Do you think you’ll survive tomorrow?”

“Barely. You?”

John lifts one shoulder.

“Dunno. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. She sounds like she’s doing better.” John shakes his head. “But then, you never really know with Harry.”

“Is she still in that Dartmouth Park flat with Clara?”

John nods, licking chocolate off his thumb. “Neither of them could afford to move out after the divorce. They went into so much debt buying the damn place, and the last three times they tried to sell it, they got offers well below asking.”

“God, that must be torture. Forced to live with your ex like that.”

“Harry says it’s great actually. Clara has the top floor, Harry, the bottom. They’ve decided that they’re much better platonic life partners than lovers apparently. Harry says they’re happy as clams.”

Sherlock looks shocked, as if John has just revealed something about human nature heretofore unrealised. He blinks.

And blinks.

Says, slowly, as if rolling the words and the idea around, tasting them, “Platonic life partners.”

John chuckles.

“That’s what we used to be, you berk. Sounds good to you, does it? And no wonder.”

Sherlock blinks again. “What? No. Not us. I mean, I suppose if we were to break up, living with you platonically would be preferable to never seeing you again, but—“

“Oh yes? And what if I did something truly reprehensible? Like Harry did, huh? Cheating on Clara? You’d be fine with that would you?”

“For a man of your moral turpitude, John, you certainly judge others rather harshly.”

“Well, that’s bloody unfair!” John points between them. “Pot. Kettle.”

Sherlock guffaws. “Me? Judge people? I don’t judge people!”

“No, you just have X-ray brain powers to dissect them down to their pants. And you wield that power like a sodding god, lording it over our heads, that you know all of our dirty secrets—“

“This is outrageous!”

“—And could at any moment lay us bare to all and sundry, while—“

“Jesus, John, I never said I couldn’t—“

“—And when I voice one unfavourable opinion, about my sister, mind you, who I fancy I know rather better than you, who’ve never met her—“

“—But the point is that I _wouldn’t_ —“

“Oh, you wouldn’t?”

“No. And I’d appreciate you giving me a little more credit. I’ve been working on being more tactful lately and I think—“

“Just last week you told the chippy that his brother in law was sleeping with his daughter.”

“Well, that’s unfair, that was information the man needed to know.”

“No, Sherlock, he did not need to know that. His daughter is 45!”

“Well, wouldn’t you want to know if your daughter was sleeping with your brother in law?”

“I—“

“Especially if it involved them embezzling money from your business so that they can run off and start a new life in Barbados?”

“You never told me—“

“I really only care one way or another if it’s connected to something interesting, like the subversion of justice, for instance. Otherwise people are welcome to do as they like, however perverted. Now please, I don’t know how we got diverted onto this ridiculous topic, but lets reroute, shall we, and talk about our own little perversions, like how I want you to—“

“Electrocute you.”

Sherlock’s cheeks go pink again and the corners of his eyes tense a little, a tiny wince, and John feels bad for teasing him, so he sets the chocolate orange aside and leans down to brush a conciliatory kiss across Sherlock’s lips.

“I’m sorry. I think I was still a little exasperated with you. Left over from my fuming on the Tube ride home. I’ll be better now, I promise.”

“We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

“No, I want to. Or, I think I do. Can you show it to me?”

Sherlock twists, bucking John up onto his knees, and has a rummage about beneath John’s armchair. John ducks his head and squints a bit into the shadowy area and sees a black case and the glint of metal objects. John’s mouth drains, his throat constricting, and he swallows noisily as Sherlock pulls out something long and black and connected to a length of thick, black rubber tubing and turns back over onto his back.

“Sit up, will you?” Sherlock asks, setting the rod down on the mattress beside him and nodding towards the pile of pillows at the head of the bed.

John hesitates for a moment, perplexed by the request, but then complies, sitting crosslegged on the bed, his back to the fireplace. The heat pulses against his skin and his front feels cold in contrast. He rubs at his arms as Sherlock moves to sitting across from him.

Sherlock holds up the instrument, which looks like a thin black wand. “This is called a body contact cable. It’s connected to the violet wand, which is plugged into the wall just there.” John follows the length of tubing with his eyes as Sherlock explains. He watches as Sherlock reaches over and turns on the thicker black instrument that the cable is connected to. A low hum fills the air. “When this is in contact with my body, my touch is electrified.”

Sherlock tucks the black bar beneath his thigh and holds up his hands, palms facing John.

“When you touch me, there will be a spark emitted. It will feel like static electricity.”

John looks at him from beneath his brows and Sherlock lowers his hands.

“Just try it,” Sherlock says, softly, utterly in earnest. “If you don’t think it’s innocuous then we’ll shag the old fashioned way, I promise.”

John turns one of his palms over on top of his knee.

Sherlock reaches out, moving slowly, as if he’s afraid of spooking John.

When his fingertips are directly above John’s he lowers them, at the same treacly pace, until

_crack!_

a purple spark leaps between their index fingers.

John shivers, the top of his head prickling wildly. His heart leaps and jitters. He laughs shakily, looking up at Sherlock, who is studying him intently.

“Wow.”

A tentative tug at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “Was it ok?”

“Yeah.”

“Want me to show you something else?”

John swallows and then nods. “Ok.”

Sherlock scoots forward until their knees are almost touching. He takes a moment to readjust the wand beneath his thigh before reaching out with his right hand once more.

This time he moves quicker until it is cupped in the air just a half inch from John’s shoulder. Neon sparks arc between them, making a faint crackling sound.

“Oh!” John exclaims, sucking in a short breath as Sherlock drags his hand slowly down the outside of John’s arm.

It’s incredible, like nothing he’s ever felt before. It feels as if there are thousands of bubbles breaking out beneath his skin, rising up to pop against his arms. His whole body tenses as the sensation takes hold of him, fizzing through him in an effervescing wave.

Sherlock moves his hand away when he reaches John’s wrist and John shudders as the feeling crests, eddying out in sweet churning echoes.

“Well?”

John’s shoulders judder involuntarily as he’s wracked by a shanking shiver, his skin tingling all over. He’s slightly breathless when he says, “Good God.”

“Right?”

John blinks at him, stunned. “What the fuck was that?”

Sherlock bites his lip, pleased. “It’s good isn’t it?”

“That’s the understatement of the year. It’s bloody fantastic!”

“Do you want me to do it again?”

“Yes!”

“All right, lay down.”

John scrambles forward and Sherlock moves out of the way to give him room.

Once John is settled on his back, Sherlock kneels between his legs.

“The closer I am to you, the less intense the spark. The further apart, the harder you’ll feel it. I can control the intensity of the electrical flow on the violet wand itself. If you can’t feel it, let me know and I’ll turn it higher. Right now, for indirect contact, I have it set on low. When I’m touching you, we ground out and you won’t feel anything. You liked when I was just barely touching you, yes? Not so much the first one when we were farther apart.”

“Right. Do that thing with your hand again.”

Sherlock grins at him, obviously proud to have found something that John likes enough to show enthusiasm over.

John fists the sheets in his hands and closes his eyes in anticipation, but nothing prepares him for the seething sparkling rush that shimmers down his chest and stomach as Sherlock moves his right hand, fingers splayed, over him.

“Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” John gasps as Sherlock glances over the top of John’s cock and continues down between his thighs.

All of John’s nerves fire and snap, needles pricking him all over, bright and sharp. All the hair on his body stands on end and the breath catches in his lungs, burning.

When Sherlock finally stops, just at the inside of John’s left knee, John opens his mouth and gulps in air.

“Holy. Buggering. Fuck.”

“Good?”

“Spectacular.”

“I’ve never seen you like that.” Sherlock sounds shy, but pleased.

“Like what?”

“So…responsive.”

John wriggles against the mattress, shivering, his skin still prickling up, and starts to giggle a little, giddy with it all. It’s a bit like the rush after a good laugh, heady and light. However, when their knees come within range and a spark jumps between them, they both yelp and jerk away in surprise.

“Put it away for a moment and come here,” John says, rubbing at the sore spot with his fingers, surprised that it had hurt quite as much as it had. Sherlock sets the bar carefully aside, back underneath John’s chair in it’s case and switches it off before he lies down on the bed next to John, snuggling into him.

“I want you to do it to me,” Sherlock rumbles, nuzzling at John’s ear as he slings his arm across John’s belly and draws him close. John rolls over onto his side and slips his knee in between Sherlock’s, drawing the duvet up and over them. John’s still got his pants on, but Sherlock’s starkers and emanating heat. John tips his head back and Sherlock takes John’s mouth in one slow, slick slide. John presses closer, opening his mouth wider, as Sherlock’s tongue slips between his lips.

“I want to do it to you too,” John murmurs, after Sherlock has snogged him thoroughly senseless. Pushing his mouth to John’s mouth and his body flush up against John’s, eager and urgent and practically vibrating with need.

“I want you to make me forget about the thousand million things going through my brain at any given moment.”

He kisses John again, deeper this time, so that John is left fairly reeling.

“I want it to quiet everything else, but you and me.”

“Sherlock.” John can’t decide if that should worry him or not. It’s hard to tell when his body and brain are otherwise engaged in one of the most decadently filthy kisses of his life.

“Please,” Sherlock pleads, pulling back, his eyes black with pupil and his breathing altered. “Please, John.”

“All right, all right.” John says, soothing him with a stroke of his hand and a quieter kiss than the last. “Tell me what to do.”

Sherlock rattles off instructions right away, squirming to get underneath John and onto his back as John pushes up to sitting. “You can tuck the cable into your pants. It’ll be easier for you to move around that way.”

John reaches underneath his chair and fishes out the wand. It’s lightweight, but he can see the thicker instrument it’s attached to, which has a bit more heft. He turns the device on, the whirring drone once more filling the sitting room, and then reaches behind him and slips it underneath the band of his boxers so that it’s resting in the small of his back.

John settles down between Sherlock’s legs, mirroring what Sherlock had done before, being careful not to get too close to any of his limbs.

Sherlock is spread out below him in a debauched sprawl. His chest and neck and cheeks are tinted in a deep shade of pink, his nipples hard and peeking out from the tangle of auburn curls on his chest. He’s looking up at John in an uncharacteristically open manner, vulnerable and a bit frantic, and John feels something hot burst behind his breastbone when he speculates on why that is. He wonders, not for the first time, how bad it gets inside Sherlock’s head. He knows he’ll never be able to fully grasp it, but considering that it drives Sherlock to seek out drugs and sex and grisly crime scenes as alternatives to being locked inside it, John knows it’s no picnic.

“Do my nipples first,” Sherlock blurts out, and then he blushes red to the tips of his ears, embarrassed maybe, at wanting it so badly.

“One at a time, yeah?” John asks, still a little uncertain about how it worked.

“Yes. Only one point will make a connection. You’ll feel it in your hands,” Sherlock says as John leans forward. “The sparks. Sometimes it’s stronger for the person holding the wand than it is for the one on the receiving end. You might go a bit numb. Is that ok?”

“It’s fine,” John says, and strangely, despite feeling vaguely disconcerted by that last point, he means it.

This is not how he had expected the night to end up. If anything he’d expected to find Sherlock in some compromising position. His worst nightmares had included a noose, or knives perhaps. John was a bit ashamed now at how far afield his mind had fled. And in a moil of fear over what John had braced himself to come home to, he had forgotten the fact that Sherlock, had never, not once, asked something of John that John was unable or unwilling to give. Even this. This machine. John was sure he’d seen it on BDSM websites before, although if you’d asked him what it was used for in a scene John wouldn’t have had the first clue. It’s not that he thinks any of it is bad. Consenting adults and all that. But when it comes to Sherlock, and, more specifically, putting Sherlock in danger, it makes John unequivocally queasy. He’d broken out in a cold sweat ever since he’d looked at Sherlock’s chart and remembered him saying, they’re all normal, John.

Reality couldn’t be further from what John had imagined. A Christmas tree, a fire, sweets that remind John of his childhood, a bed laid out before the fire.

And Sherlock asking for something John can give him.

Relief.

John braces one hand next to Sherlock’s hip and reaches out with the other.

John is prepared this time for the sizzle and pop as the sparks erupt between them, but they both still flinch and tense when John makes first contact with Sherlock’s skin. Sherlock’s stomach muscles bunch up and his fingers dig into the mattress, his toes curling reflexively, knees drawing up. As John draws a slow circle around Sherlock’s right nipple Sherlock bows into it, his eyes rolling back in his head as he lets out a low, breathy moan.

The vibration settles in John’s wrist and palm as a heavy, sibilant buzz.

If John wasn’t sure before if he had ever managed to completely overwhelm Sherlock, he was absolutely sure of it now.

He had never, ever, reduced Sherlock to the writhing, begging, blissed out creature he did that night.

And when Sherlock asked him to use his tongue…

“Oh,

ohmygod.

 _John_.”

  
**********

  
The next morning John wakes to the blare of a siren wailing down Baker Street.

He burrows his nose into Sherlock’s spine and grunts his displeasure.

White snow forged light streams in through the windows. Fat white flakes float lazily by.

John presses closer

and then

closer still.

“Arghle.” Sherlock mumbles, thrusting his arse back against where John is starting to squirm with mindless intention against him.

Spider silk threads of sleep pull at him.

“Ah,” John gasps, as the head of his sleep-hard cock slips into the tight, sweat damp slit of Sherlock’s slim thighs.

“Mmm,” Sherlock hums, tightening around him.

John presses his forehead between Sherlock’s shoulder blades and then wraps a hand around his hip, pushing deeper into the firm grip of his legs.

“Fuck,” John breathes as he’s engulfed in slippery slick heat.

Sherlock doesn’t answer, just works his hand behind John and takes a generous handful of his arse, urging him

closer.

“Fuck, you were so hot last night,” John pants, working himself back and forth in tiny, jerky movements. His foreskin catching and then pulling taut, the round bulb of his head rubbing maddeningly against the crinkly hair of Sherlock’s inner thighs, and popping out the other side with a lewd squelching squelch.

“Yeah?”

“So hot,” John says, half-dreaming, half-incoherent with how good Sherlock feels around him. “I want to do that for you every time.”

“You do.”

John shakes his head, dragging his face against the angled planes of Sherlock’s back. Rubbing his bristling stubble all over the fine fair skin.

Raising sparks.

Sparks.

John remembers. 

Remembers what happened before they fell asleep.

“No, I don’t.”

“You do. You’re so good to me, John.”

“I’m not.”

John feels unsteady. Too honest. The realisations of last night. Everything at the surface. Ready to spill over. Spilling over. Spilt.

“Roll over.”

Sherlock does. He’s quiet, quieter than usual, and when John slips lubed up fingers between his cheeks, he simply breathes out, a shocked little sound, and then pushes back into John’s hands.

Trusting.

“I want to give you what you need,” John gasps, breathless, helpless. Gasps. And gasps. Can’t get enough air. He feels too much at once, overwhelmed. Swamped, dragged down into his body.

“You do.”

“No,” John slurs it. He’s drunk on sleep, on dreams, on the intimacy of what he had witnessed last night.

Of Sherlock laid out before him, pared down to some essence, some person John isn’t sure he’s ever met.

Sherlock at his utmost need.

Brought to that place of ecstasy of obliteration of non-existence of evanescence.

Sherlock quieted.

His mind at heel.

And John: undone in the face of it.

He takes Sherlock’s hips in his hands, hard. Feels his bones rigid through his soft soft softest skin.

Grounding.

His cock slides into the satiny crack of his arse. His head pushing up greedily between. John pushes the cheeks together. Makes a tunnel. Ruts.

Sherlock groans.

Head hung between his shoulders, his back dipped, arse presented to John, all of him bathed in cool marble winter light, but warm, warm beneath John's hands, warm and lush and willing 

for John to

cleave

and

part

and

“Oh godddd,”

take.

The head, his head, the head of his cock, gets caught on the rim, on the rim, on the entrance to, to Sherlock, and

“Fuck me.”

he

sinks

for a moment

just

inside.

Swallowed up.

Sherlock's body pulls on him, tries to drag him in, drag him closer.

“Fuck me.”

“Do it.

“Fuck me.

“ _John_."

And

John.

Is grateful for the fact that Sherlock can’t see his face in that moment.

Last night. Sherlock’s eyes closed. Hands clenched. Toes cramping.

Lost to John.

On some other plane.

As John drags his electric, neon purple, spitting, sparkling, spark-plug tongue over every inch of Sherlock’s trembling dissintegrating body.

His cock.

His arsehole.

His bollocks.

His lips.

Jaw.

Thighs.

Belly.

Nipples.

Cock.

Cock.

Cock.

And Sherlock.

This Sherlock who John has never met.

This Sherlock who won’t look at John.

Whose mind is unknowable to John.

Who arches into John’s tongue like it’s redemption. Like it’s salvation. Who cries out like he’s seeing God.

John pushes his cock into his Sherlock. This Sherlock. This Sherlock who is here. Who is his. Who is in John’s safekeeping. John fucks inside him, fingers dug deep down into bone, fills him to the brim.

If John gives him what he needs will he not need John anymore?

Is this a self-defeating exercise?

John takes him.

Over and over.

Asserts his claim.

Reminds him.

Bruises the skin at Sherlock’s hips, sears his fingerprints into the thin, fragile skin. 

Don’t.

Leave.

Me.

Forces the moans from his mouth with each shattering smack of their thighs. Sweeps up the beads of come from his throbbing hot cock.

Cock.

Cock.

Cock.

John licking the empty air beside Sherlock’s straining cock, the seething wave of sparks washing over his most sensitive skin.

“Just.”

Let.

Me.

“Oh, god.”

Be.

John’s cock sliding in and out of Sherlock’s willing body.

Enough.

Spreading him.

Splitting him.

Opening him.

wide.

For John.

To slip inside.

To come inside.

To stay.

To stay.

To stay.

Sherlock moaning as John pulls out and rubs the thick hard heart hammering blood beating head of his cock against the swelling, blossoming red, red, so red, opening of Sherlock

Sherlock

Sherlock

Sherlock on his knees. Collapsed down onto his elbows, his open panting mouth twisted up in the sheets as John tries to fuck him through the floor.

Like he had asked.

Like he wanted.

John takes his heavy so heavy heavy with this thrumming so alive with wanting with this this this longing, cock in his hand and pushes the thick red blossoming red head inside.

Glides into tight wet blood hot heat.

Blood.

Blood.

Blooms.

John wants.

To be.

Enough.

Pushing into him to the root so that he might he might he might take root as Sherlock rocks forward, hands scrabbling against the rug for balance, knuckles scraped raw, all of John scraped raw, as he’s shoved off the bed by the force of John’s desperate thrusts.

John’s name a prayer. Offered up.

Laid flat, but still arching up.

Still offering himself to John.

As if.

As if he is indelible.

As if he can’t be used up.

As if.

As if John doesn’t know better.

As if John doesn’t know…

“I.” strangled.

what blood

                                           b lo  

                                                          ssom          

                                               ing

on cold wet ground looks like.

And now. What Sherlock looks like when he’s shut off. When John’s simmering seething bubbling boiling tongue is shutting him off shutting him down taking him where John can’t follow.

Where John can’t.

But he’s here.

He’s here.

John can feel him under his hands.

John’s name on his lips, begging.

John’s name on his lips, a thanksgiving.

John’s name on his lips, asking for mercy.

Asking John to be

Enough

and

John’s hand

John’s hand

John’s hand

gives

and gives

and gives

it tries _so hard_ to give

                                        it to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interested in learning more about violet wands? Here is a website I found helpful:
> 
>  
> 
> [The Violet Wand Store](https://www.violetwands.com)


	9. Chapter Nine

John’s hands.

John’s hands sliding up Sherlock’s arms which are crooked above his head. His head which is hanging off the edge of the mattress, forehead pressed to the worn-thin sitting room rug.

John’s hands fitting themselves into the cool satiny notches between Sherlock’s knuckles, fingers threading together with Sherlock’s long white fingers.

John: capsized on the rolling sea of Sherlock’s body. Sprawled on top of Sherlock, his cheek pressed between his shoulders blades as his ribs heave beneath him, his heart a wave breaking in a hushed roar beneath John’s ear.

Slowly, slowly, John comes back to himself.

_Christ._

“S’rry”, he slurs, squeezing Sherlock’s hands in apology. He moves to shift up onto his elbows, but Sherlock doesn’t let go his hands, forcing John to settle back down against him.

He turns his head to the side, lifts it to peer over his shoulder at John, curls falling in his eyes.

“Come here.”

Sherlock pulls in his elbows and pushes down the bed until he is lying on his stomach. John pushes up, lifting his weight off of him, before settling down on his side next to him.

Sherlock’s eyes are washed out in the white light. John draws his thumb over his cheek to tuck his curls back behind his ear.

Useless; it springs back instantly.

They both smile.

Sherlock is quiet and John is full of words, full of explanation, but none of them will come. There are too many of them. They are latent with a violence John is afraid to unleash. They are too heavy, too cruel. They will shatter all of this, they will break them. When he opens his mouth to apologise again, futile, Sherlock presses forward and kisses him.

His lips are soft and chill with morning air, his breath warm and a bit sour between. John doesn’t care.

“Don’t be sorry,” Sherlock whispers, turning to push the length of his warm body into John’s. “I loved it.”

“I shouldn’t—“

“Shouldn’t what? Take what you need? I want you to.”

“No, I shouldn’t use you like—“

“But I’m asking you to.”

John shakes his head, unable to explain.

What blood looks like, blooming on the cold wet ground.

“I—“ trying.

Fear strangles him. He chokes, breath frozen in his lungs.

“I trust you.”

And there is the crux of it.

“I trust you.” John shakes his head, drops his chin, can’t look at him. “John.” Sherlock’s thumb urging John back up. “John, I’ve never felt anything like this before.”

His eyes.

His fathomless, bottomless, sky and sea eyes.

“I trust you.”

And maybe, maybe, if Sherlock had just asked one simple question, or if John had just had the courage to say what was eating him up inside, maybe everything that came later wouldn’t have happened. Maybe they could have avoided all the pain, all the heartache.

Maybe.

If.

“John.”

“Look at me.”

“John.”

John surges forward and kisses him.

Kisses him and kisses him.

Lets the movement of Sherlock’s mouth, crumpled to silk beneath the crush of John’s mouth, the hot slickness of his tongue, his big rangy body plastering itself to John’s, hands grasping, grasping, overwhelm him.

John is mindless, hollowed out, numb.

Numb.

Was that it?

That numbness in his hands last night.

Was that the trigger?

 _Trigger, trigger._ Ella’s voice echoing in his head. _Be aware of your triggers. Breathe, John, breathe._

_Breathe._

John can’t breathe. Can only take in Sherlock’s air. The air that he is finished with. John will take it. Will breathe it in and let it sear him.

They break apart gasping. Foreheads pushing into each other. Sweat beading between them, wherever they are touching.

“I want more.”

John stills. Pulls back a little to meet his eyes.

“I don’t…” Sherlock pauses. Rolls his hips. “…feel finished.”

John doesn’t have time to process that before Sherlock is kissing him again. Kissing the breath from him. Kissing him with desperation and John can’t…

John can.

John can.

He can be enough.

John swallows it all down. It’s like shards of glass, ripping him up on the way down, but he does it. It’s amazing, how much one can dissemble into smaller, more bearable pieces and tuck away into dark hidden corners.

“Tell me what you want.”

“Kiss me.”

Restless, pushing into John. Getting hard. Leaving sticky spots all over John’s hip.

John slips his hand around and anchors it in Sherlock’s curls.

Tips him back so that the petals of his pink pink lips are angled for John to bend and taste.

To bend and lick.

Lick.

To bend and kiss.

Slow.

Just as slow and sweet and tender as Sherlock needs it.

Words are too hard, but John can tell Sherlock everything he needs to with his touch.

_Like this. I love you, like this._

_This much._

_You are more precious to me than anything else in this world._

_And I will do whatever it takes to make sure you know it._

And, ignores, underneath, that ever-present riptide of fear.

It sucks at John’s feet, threatens to drown him, but he kicks up and away.

_Like this._

_Like this._

Sherlock rubs his cock against John, making small fricative sounds as his foreskin catches and scrapes.

Sherlock gasps.

“Get the lube,” John says, not giving him leave of his mouth.

Sherlock fumbles about behind him, blind.

“Bugger.”

“What?”

“I dropped it.”

John laughs, a burst of sound in the quiet of the room, and rolls over so that Sherlock can reach it. They roll back together a moment later, Sherlock’s wet hand between them, his leg slung over John’s hip. John shivers, his prick soft, oversensitive still.

“Here.” John grips him, kissing him all the while. The skin on his lips scorched from the rough sandpaper drag of Sherlock’s prickling stubble. Lifting up his balls he guides Sherlock between his thighs.

Their teeth bump, a sharp explosion ricocheting down John’s body to burn in his toes, as Sherlock opens his mouth and moans.

John crosses his ankles and squeezes.

“Ohhhhhh,” shivered out into John’s mouth.

John licks at his lips, thinking of last night.

His mouth, electric, lifting Sherlock out of his body, out of his head.

Overwhelming.

Sherlock glides between his legs, thick and hard.

John sucks on his pulse point, feels the pounding of his heart.

He sucks harder, draws the blood up to the surface to beat it’s hummingbird beat against his tongue.

Sherlock thrusts, his movements erratic, pushing John half onto his back for a better angle to fuck his thighs.

John tightens around him.

Releases.

Tightens.

Releases.

“John.”

His eyes are a devouring black, dark with need.

John sets his teeth to Sherlock’s clavicle and drags.

Sets his hands to Sherlock’s arse, pulls his cheeks apart and helps him move.

The wet head catches against John’s hole and they both freeze.

John lifts his head and stares into the dropped out bottom of Sherlock’s eyes.

“John.”

John jerks his head. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” John nods. “Just. Just a little. It’s ok.”

“Are you—“

“I’m sure, just—“

“Ok. Just.”

“Yeah.”

Sherlock shifts a little down, pointing himself up.

John closes his eyes.

Feels: pressure.

Hot, plummy silk.

Pushing.

Stretching.

Just.

“Oh, oh,” Sherlock exclaims, perched up on his elbows over John so that John can feel his breath on his cheek.

John presses his hands against Sherlock’s arse, pressing him slowly, slowly, closer.

Pushing.

Stretching.

Bit by bit.

Working John open.

Coaxing his body.

Until,

_pop!_

the soaked spongy head slips inside the taut rim.

It pinches and John prickles, tiny hot and cold thrills skating up and down his spine.

Sherlock pulls back, pulls out, and John breathes.

Breathes.

_Breathe, John, breathe._

And then, just as their noses brush, just as Sherlock dips to kiss John so softly, so, so softly, he rocks his hips an inch forward, and with John’s hands on him, urging, urging, he pushes just inside, pulls out, and comes.

Their lips barely touching. Just skimming. The tips of their noses kissing.

John wraps him up, brings him down. Holds him.

They’re both a disgusting sticky mess and they stink of sex.

It's perfect.

John tucks his nose behind Sherlock’s ear and breathes them in. The fairy lights glisten in Sherlock's hair and the pine tree lends it's sweet-sharp scent to the cold charcoal smell coming from the grate. They forgot to close the flue the night before and John can feel the breeze tickling the hair on the top of his head. Goosebumps break out on his arms. John pulls the duvet up and folds it over Sherlock's shoulders.

“Happy Christmas Eve,” he whispers, arms wrapped around Sherlock's neck, heels resting in the sweaty hollows of Sherlock's knees.

“Happy Christmas Eve,” Sherlock murmurs sleepily into John’s throat, pressing his smile to John's skin.

 

**********

 

Green light ripples over the tiles as John steps into the kitchen, showered, shaved, and dressed. The scent of coffee, perking on the counter, rides on the air.

Sherlock sits in a kitchen chair with his eyes closed, one leg crossed over the other, head tipped into the cup of one palm.

He’s wearing his blue silk. It molds itself to his body like water falling to pool around the flute of his leg, his ankle, his foot.

He looks utterly at peace. His face is at ease, all the lines smoothed out. He could be asleep, but John can see the smile quivering at the corners of his mouth.

“Come here,” he says again in his deep velvety voice that makes all of John's hair stand on end.

Sherlock reaches out with both hands, draws John close so that John loses his balance and has to set his knee on top of the seat between Sherlock’s legs, as Sherlock’s long arms wind around him, his face burrowing into John’s belly.

“I don’t want you to go.”

Black curls wind around John’s fingers as he scratches lightly at Sherlock’s scalp.

“Let’s stay here. Stay in bed all day. We could see how many times I can make you come.” The words are muffled against John’s Fair Isle Christmas jumper, red this year with white trim.

“I’m afraid you’d be disappointed with the results.”

One eye, sea-glass green in this light, slits open. His hands, against John’s sides, clutch harder, fingers curling into the wool. “Don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

The tips of John’s ears smart. “Because we can’t pretend like the world doesn’t exist forever.”

“Why not?”

“Because I need to see my sister and you need to see your dad and your brother.”

“I don’t _need_ to see them. I am obligated to see them. There is a difference.”

“Don’t you want to see your dad?”

“I don’t really care one way or the other. I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me. He was a vague presence in my life. I don’t know why I must now put on this charade where I pretend to be devastated that he is ill. I’ve spoken more frequently with his nurses over the last year than I have with him.”

John sighs. He’s not sure why he’s so adamant about seeing Harry this year. Maybe it has something to do with Sherlock and him getting together. Maybe it’s about reckoning with the damage done by his parents with the only other person on Earth who would understand. Again, the words fill him to the brim, but they refuse to be summoned.

John pets at Sherlock's hair, the ends staticky in the dry, cold air. “Then stay. I’ll be back in the morning. We’ll go down to Sussex. Stay until New Years. How about that?”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“I’ll pop back up for two days, then come back down. Would you like that?”

“Yes.”

“Good. It’s settled then.”

Sherlock’s hands unclench a little as he says, resigned, “I suppose I might as well go down and see them. Mycroft is sending a car and may well have me forcibly removed from the premises if I resist.”

John chuckles and steps back, setting his foot back on the ground. Sherlock’s arms unwind, but don’t let go.

John cups his face.

“Thank you,” Sherlock says softly.

John scrunches his brow. “For what?”

“For last night. For this morning. Thank you for…understanding.”

A sharp pain in John’s throat. He swallows against it and it stabs him.

His voice is rough when he says, “You don’t have to thank me. It’s not as if I—“

Sherlock shakes his head between John’s hands.

“Stop. Just accept it.”

John leans down and kisses his forehead. Sherlock’s lashes flutter and his mouth curves up.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I like you in the red.”

“Oh, yes? Mrs. Hudson picked it out for me. She said you always short circuit a little when I wear it.”

“Well, she’s partially correct. I tend to short circuit a bit no matter what colour you’re wearing.”

Sherlock’s hands fall away as John steps back.

John goes out and shrugs his coat on. Stands for a moment on the landing patting at pockets. Sherlock stands and drifts toward him, the belt of his robe coming untied as he walks forward.

John slips his hands beneath the floating edges and touches the creamy softness of his skin, gathers him in.

They’re kissing again.

It’s ridiculous really.

John feels as if his lips are swollen and bruised, but it only makes him kiss harder to hear the pained little sound of pleasure Sherlock makes in response.

It's mad.

Sherlock rubbing his bare body up against the coarseness of John’s wool and corduroy, with John tucked into the watery silk, hands sliding up the warm broad planes of his back, fingers tucked into the crease of his spine.

Leaving John breathless and flushed, hair mussed, before he has to head out the door to the Tube.

“Happy Christmas,” Sherlock says, with one last string of kisses that lead up from the corner of John’s mouth to his ear.

“I love you,” John says, slipping outside of Sherlock’s robe and helping him tidy the bow before he picks up his duffle and slings it over his shoulder. With one last kiss he’s clattering down the stairs, certain that if he doesn’t leave then he never will.

John carries the ghost of Sherlock's touch with him, warm beneath his jumper and vest, out into the cold December wind. Like an ember inside him, it steadies him, drives back some of the numbness.

On the Tube, he kindles it, thinking of Sherlock saying, over and over, I trust you.

I trust you.

_I trust you._


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my betas, lawyermargo, GWWG, and Violetwylde who helped me tremendously with this chapter. I love you and I don't deserve you.
> 
> In advance: I'm sorry.
> 
> But I will promise you this: this is a happy story. And it will end in the happiest way. It's just going to be a little bumpy here while the boys learn how to communicate with one another. <3 <3 <3

John rides the Bakerloo Line to Charing Cross and then switches to the Northern Line heading towards Kentish Town. Exits at Tuffnell Park and walks the rest of the way, hoping to work off some of his pent-up anxiety.

The streets of Dartmouth Park are quiet and lined with brick three-storey flats. There’s a light dusting of snow covering everything, a sifting of powdered sugar for John to leave footprints in on the pavement, and Christmas trees glow brightly in the windows at he passes. The air is thin and tastes of frost. It lingers in the back of his throat, ferrous and hoary. Reminds him of licking at snowballs when he was a boy, the way the snow clung to the warmth of his tongue magnetically, and how, for a moment before it melted, John imagined he could feel the individual spindles of each snowflake, like tiny hairs, tickling the roof of his mouth.

By the time John reaches Harry and Clara’s flat his hands have gone tingly in his gloves, but it’s done little to assuage the feeling of unease currently writhing in his gut.

“Christ, John, you look like shit.”

Harry smells the same, John thinks, as his sister yanks him inside off the stoop and pulls him into a hug.

“What the fuck is the matter? It’s Christmas!”

“It’s nice to see you too, Harry.”

“Who’s that?” Clara sticks her head out of the door at the top of the stairs. “Oh, John, hello!”

John gives her a hug too.

“John looks wretched doesn’t he?” Harry says, her nose scrunched up, as they pull apart.

John scowls at her as the two of them stand side by side in the tiny foyer studying him. One tall and brown with a head of tight black curls, and the other short and pale with a silver pixie cut.

“He looks tired. Are you tired?” Clara asks, diplomatically.

Harry watches him over the rim of her glass as she takes a sip and John does a double take. It looks suspiciously like mulled cider and John, a shock of cold slamming through him, reaches to take it from her.

“Fucking hell, Harry, you can’t be—“ he says, grabbing it from her hand, only to have it slosh over the rim. “—serious. Clara, how could—“ John breaks off to lick his thumb and realises.

“Apple juice.”

Harry hums, glaring daggers at him, and holds her hand out for the cup.

“I’m sorry,” John says. Scrubbing a hand down his face. Jesus, he’s on edge. “Really, Har, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“What’s going on with you?” Harry asks, ignoring his apology.

“Nothing. I’m—“

“Something’s up. Your bags are puffed up and you look like you haven’t slept in days. Is it work?”

And by work she means: Is it Sherlock?

“No, just a busy week.”

“He’s lying,” Clara puts in, shaking her head at him.

Harry nods, her eyes raking John up and down. “Yes, but why is he lying?”

“Could we just, you know, enjoy your party? We can talk about this later surely?”

Two pairs of brown eyes squint at him suspiciously, and John is afraid that they’re not going to drop it, but just then there is a burst of sound from the crowd gathered in the room up the stairwell behind them that makes them both cock their heads.

“All right, you’re off the hook for now.”

John takes a deep breath and blows it out.

He stops to drop his duffle off inside Harry’s sitting room and takes a moment to wipe his clammy palms on his trousers and to run his fingers through his hair before he climbs the stairs to Clara’s.

 

  
**********

 

_Brixton—Stockwell—Vauxhall—Victoria—Green Park—Oxford Circus_

John sits alone in Clara’s office, absently repeating stops on the Victoria Line to himself. It’s a tic, he knows, from the days of PTSD after he came home from the war when he used to ride the trains, but sometimes it still works. John runs his fingertips over the arm of the sofa. The fabric is ribbed and it buzzes under his touch.

Numbing.

He jerks his hand back as if burnt and fists it on his knee.

Through a pair of open French doors he can see into the sitting room where Harry and Clara’s friends are gathered. Tinsel on the flocked tree glinting against the bank of floor to ceiling windows keeps snapping across John’s eyes and making him blink back spots. Backlit by a deep blue twilight sky with London’s lights glittering like a carpet of stars rolling down the hill below their flat, the setting is rather striking.

Clara’s flat, the upstairs one, hosts the Christmas Eve fete. Harry’s below, could best be described as eclectic, at worst, an eye sore. Clara’s taste fits the grandeur of the flat. The high ceilings and the waxed hardwood, the state of the art kitchen and the spectacular stone fireplace. Her style is minimalist and couture; Harry’s tends more towards Bag End.

Everything is white and clean. Too clean. John’s never been sure where to rest his glass, his hands, his feet. He leaves smudges behind on glass tabletops, on crystal goblets full of mulled apple juice. The toes of one of his shoes scuffs the tile in the bathroom, leaving behind a streak of black, stark and sooty.

In the sitting room, lesbians mingle. Some mill about the dining space near the bank of windows on the opposite side, some sit in front of the fire in the hearth, some perch on stools at the bar picking at the buffet. Some have small children colouring at the dining table and a teenager who sits in a corner bent over her phone. A few are downstairs at the door exchanging goodbye kisses with Clara. John is one of two men in the room. Laurence, the other, cossets a hiccuping newborn, softly cooing and patting, thoroughly engrossed, while his wife gathers food from the buffet. Conversation rises and falls as groups form and disperse. It’s a crowd John knows fairly well. A mix of lawyers and social workers and do-gooder-non-profit types. From law school and the wedding and various anniversaries and birthdays, John knows almost all of the women here. John sits in an armchair next to the fire and sips at his warm, spiced apple juice, watching.

_WarrenEustonKingsHighburyFinsburySevenSistersTot—_

His mobile vibrates against his thigh.

_—tenham_

_Hi <3_

The right corner of John’s mouth, hooks up, helpless, calm flooding through him.

He breathes.

 _Hi_  
_< 3 <3 <3 <3 <3_

_How’s it going?_

_Fine. Party’s in full swing. I’m hiding out. Needed a breather. You?_

_There have been zero homicides._

_Ah, Mycroft’s not yet arrived then?_

John imagines Sherlock snort-laughing at that, even though it wasn’t much of a joke, and his smile tugs wider into a proper grin.

_How’s your dad?_

_Batty._

_I’m sorry._

_Happens._

_Still sorry._

_I miss you._

_I miss you too._

_I found your present._

John’s eyes instinctively skip around, but no one is paying him any mind. John’s absence has been noted by only Harry, who occasionally sends him wide eyed glances coupled with swift jerks of her head for him to join them, but otherwise John is alone. He turns his attention back to his mobile.

_And? Do you like it?_

_I miss you._

_I miss you too. Are you…thinking about using it?_

_If I go up to my room, will you help me?_

_Help you how?_

_We could FaceTime._

_Jesus, Sherlock, I’m sitting in the middle of a party!_

_So? Go to a different room._

_I am in a different room, but they’d still be able to hear you._

_Fetch your headphones._

_I don’t know where they are and I’m not going to look for them. Harry will pull me back in._

_They’re in your coat pocket._

_How???????_

_You always put them there after you’ve ridden the Tube._

_I didn’t tell you I took the Tube._

_You always take the Tube when you’re having a panic attack._

_Sherlock._

_I think it’s something to do with the swaying motion and the repetitiveness. It soothes you._

_Sherlock._

_Yes._

_Shut up._

_All right._

_…_

_John?_

_…_

_Your dots are blinking, but you’re not saying anything._

_…_

_Do you want to talk about why you had a panic attack?_

_No._

_Ah, there you are. Did you find your headphones?_

_Yes._

_Good. Will you put them in so that I can call you?_

_I’m not sure it’s a good idea._

_It’s a great idea._

_Watching you have a wank while my sister and everyone important to her sits in the room across from me? Sounds dangerous._

_You like dangerous._

_Helpless. John is. He can’t fucking help himself. He’s madly in love._

_Did you just get hard thinking about it?_

_I will not answer that._

_You did!_

_And so what if I did?_

_Then I need to call you RIGHT NOW._

Harry leans into the doorway just then.

“Get out here right now, John Hamish Watson,” she hisses through bared teeth, in a facsimile of a smile, that looks more like a snarl.

_Sherlock, I’ve really got to go. Enjoy yourself ok ;)_

_What? Why?_

_Harry’s commandeered me. I have to be polite and say goodbye to her guests. Help with the washing up._  
_I penguin track you._

_Will you text me later?_

_John?_

_John. I penguin track you too!_

_Hello?_

  
**********

 

  
“All right, spill.”

Two hours later, the dishwasher is running and the last of the crystal and the good Christmas china has been hand dried and put away. John is seated at the butcher block kitchen table. Clara and Harry are across from him like some kind of tribunal. There a mix of mini mince and quince pies and butter tarts between them, which they are all taking bites from.

John chews slowly, thinking of where to even start.

“Do you think, because of what happened with mum and dad, that we’re incapable of having healthy relationships?”

Harry snorts and glances sidelong at Clara, who raises her eyebrows and smirks.

“What’s the lucky girl’s name?”

“There’s no girl.”

“Then why the question?”

John swallows his bite.

“It’s Sherlock.”

He takes a moment to let that land, savouring the twin expressions of blank shock shining back at him, before lobbing the second revelation at them.

“We’re engaged.”

Harry almost springs across the table at him. “What!?”

“You heard me.”

“You and Sherlock.”

“Yes.”

“You and Sherlock. Are. _Engaged_.”

“Yes.”

“You owe me 50 quid,” Clara says, nudging Harry with her elbow, looking smug.

“I do not!”

“You do. When John moved in and started blogging about that Holmes bloke, I bet you 50 quid they’d end up together. Pay up.”

“Oh, shut up you. Can’t you see that my little brother is in crisis? This is no time to be settling debts. Now, John. When the fuck did you two even get together? This seems rather a rushed job doesn’t it?”

John rubs his hand across the back of his neck. “A bit. We got together about three months ago.”

“How’d it happen? Did you get soused one evening and shag by accident?”

“No.”

“Fell asleep on the sofa and woke up snuggling?” Clara suggests, hopeful, chin in her hand.

“Jesus, Clara, what is this, Mills and Boon?”

“What? It’s romantic. I bet it was something romantic, right, John?”

“Er…”

Harry narrows her eyes at Clara. “We met when I spilt my lager on you at a footie match.”

“It was a meet cute! Love at first sight! We’re basically a romance novel ourselves.”

Harry guffaws at that. “Oh, yes. That’s us. A love story for the ages.”

Clara elbows her again. “Shut up.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed you for the hopeless romantic, Clara,” John says, digging his fork into the butter tart closest to him.

“Right?” Harry exclaims in vindication.

“And why not?” Clara asks, looking cooly outraged.

John holds up his hands. “No reason.”

Harry chimes in helpfully, “It’s because you’re uptight, love.”

“I’m not uptight.”

Both John and Harry press their lips together, incredulous.

“Oh, bugger off, the both of you.”

“Ok, ok, back to Johnny. How’d it happen then? Did he spill one of his experiments on you and help you wash up after?” Harry waggles her eyebrows in a suggestive manner that comes off mostly ridiculous and Clara laughs.

“No.”

“Well?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I just bet it is.”

“Not something I’d feel entirely comfortable sharing with my sister.”

“Ohhhhhh,” Clara breathes, eyes flaring wide at the possibility of a really juicy secret.

“Or my sister’s…whatever you are now.”

“Oh, just spit it out, John. We’re all adults here.”

John squirms a bit in his chair.

“Oh, this is going to be good,” Clara says, leaning back in her seat, settling in.

John’s cheeks fill with a rush of blood. “I had a prostate exam.”

And, predictably enough, they both burst into laughter.

John weathers it, arms folded across his chest, face hot.

“Oh, god. Oh, god, he’s precious.” Clara is clutching her chest and gasping.

Harry has collapsed against her, giggling.

“Enjoying your prostate doesn’t make you gay, John!”

“Yes, Harry, thank you.”

“Ok, ok, shush up,” Harry says, straightening and swatting Clara with her hand. John gives them both a moment to wipe the tears from their eyes.

“Bloody hell, I haven’t laughed that hard in ages.”

“I am aware that it sounds ridiculous.”

Clara winks at him. “Just a wee bit.”

Harry is less circumspect. “So what, your GP had a rub around down there and you decided you wanted to marry your flatmate?”

“Jesus, Harry.”

“Yeah, Harry, that’s low even for you.” Clara shakes her head.

“What? I mean, that’s basically what he just said.”

“No, it’s not.”

“John, go ahead. We’re listening. _Respectfully_.” Clara looks pointedly at Harry who sticks out her tongue.

John looks down into his cup and shrugs. “Didn’t you ever have something happen that…opened a door?”

Both of their faces soften instantly.

“I was already in love with him. I knew that part. But I never, I just never let myself take it to the physical part. I know it sounds daft.”

“It doesn’t sound daft. That’s toxic heterosexuality for you, right there.”

Clara shakes her head reproachfully at Harry and mutters, “Not the time, Harriet.”

“When I started…experimenting…I started to let myself think about what it would be like. To be with him. In every way.”

Clara and Harry nod encouragingly.

“But I knew he didn’t want that. A physical relationship, so it felt wrong.”

“Oh, John.” Clara reaches over and takes Harry’s hand.

“So I told him. I told him what was going on. That I was in love with him. That I wanted to be with him. Like that. I told him I would move out if I was making him uncomfortable.”

Clara clutches Harry’s hand against her chest. “And he told you he was in love with you too?”

“Yeah.”

“John, that’s wonderful!”

John smiles. “It is.”

“So what’s the problem? When you got here, you looked devastated. What’s happened?”

John looks at Clara and says, helplessly, “He’s an addict.”

And Clara, bless her, nods in understanding. “Yeah.”

John spreads his hands on the table, palms up. Empty. “And I’m afraid, all the time.”

“Yeah.”

“He…I love him. And he’s been honest with me about his recovery. But, I feel like if I make a wrong step, or, don’t give him what he needs, or if he gets bored with me, if I’m not enough, then he’ll, then he’ll,” John sucks shallowly at the air. The weight of it crashing down on him at once.

Blood.

Blood on the cold wet ground.

No matter how much time passes, he can't ever seem to erase that image from his mind.

Clara comes around the table and sits next to him.

“What do you do with the fear?” John asks quietly, pleading, begging.

Clara wraps one arm around John’s shoulders and covers his shaking empty hand with the other.

“How can you trust them?”

She rocks with him.

“How do you know that they won’t hurt themselves again?”

And across from him, tears tracking down his sisters cheeks. John feels instantly guilty.

“I’m sorry Har, I am. Maybe I shouldn’t—“

“No, it’s all right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So are we, believe me. You think we don’t hate ourselves for it? How much we hurt everyone around us?” Harry snaps, bitterly.

“Harry—“

“Sorry, sorry.” She wipes at her cheeks, shakes her head.

Clara waits a beat and then says gently, “John, the truth is, you don’t know.”

“Never?”

“No.”

“How do you live like that?”

“You have to decide if you can stay, not knowing. And they have to decide if they want to live.”

“What do you mean?”

Clara sighs. “Nothing you can do will ever be enough, John. You can only love them and try to help them, but it’s their decision in the end. You can’t force them, you can’t choose sobriety for them. They have to want it. Do you think Sherlock wants it?”

John nods. “Yes.”

“But…”

“But, he’s not in therapy anymore. And it’s his bloody brain. Sometimes, he can’t turn it off. If he’s not distracted, it’s like he can’t function. It eats him up from the inside out. And there’s just me. I’m the last line of defence.”

Clara sniffs. “Yeah, that’s the problem for most of us. We can’t turn it off on our own. That’s why there’s medication, John. Sherlock might be a genius, but he’s not built differently than the rest of us.”

“I’ve suggested meds before, but he scoffs at them. He uses his work, his experiments, sex, as palliatives.”

Clara’s ears perk at that. “Sex?”

“Yeah.”

“Ah.”

“Ah, what?” Harry asks, peering curiously at Clara.

“Well, that’s a lot of pressure on John isn’t it?”

“Pressure for what?”

“To be Sherlock’s shut off valve. I don’t think Sherlock means it, but it’s manipulative of him to use sex that way.”

John shakes his head. “I don’t think he’s manipulating me.”

“Really?”

“I think he’s trying to include me, if that makes sense.”

“But isn’t that putting the responsibility in your hands?”

John shrugs. “I mean, I like it. It’s sex. I want him to show me what he likes, what he needs.”

“Do you feel like you can say no?”

Oh.

John thinks of the night it all started. When Sherlock was climbing the walls. The night Sherlock had been begging for a blow job, going out of his head. John had said no then, hadn’t he?

Never mind the fact that they’d ended up having sex anyway.

John had been able to say no, right?

Yes.

But…

“I feel like I can say no, but I also feel like if I do, I’m afraid of what he might use instead.”

“And you think marrying him will reassure him, yeah? You think it’ll provide this magic piece of reassurance, yeah? Like if you’re a family and you’re committed it’ll magically fix them, right?” Harry again, but this time she’s looking at Clara.

Clara looks stricken. “That’s unfair, Har.”

“I’m not marrying him to fix him, Harry. I’m marrying him because I love him and I want to spend the rest of my life with him.”

“Really?”

“Yeah!”

“Well, you’re lying to yourself, John. You’ve had a bleeding hero complex ever since you were young. You did it with mum. You did it with me. You did it in med school. In the army. With Sherlock. You love a hopeless case. John, look at me. You cannot save everyone, love. We’re all fucked up one way or another. Some of us are fucked up beyond repair, just like dad. Nothing you did could have stopped him from drinking and beating her. Nothing Clara did could have stopped me from blacking out and cheating on her. It’s a question of whether or not you’re willing to work on lessening how fucked up you are. Do you think Sherlock is willing to do that? Are you?”

Clara interjects, her voice lower, calmer, “John, for me, it was a matter of trust. I loved your sister, I still love her, but too much had happened before Harry got into recovery. Too much hurt caused, on both sides. I couldn’t trust her or myself to love each other the way we needed to. And that’s why we split.”

“Do you trust her now?”

Clara looks at Harry and smiles, softly, wistfully. “I do.”

“But you don’t want to be together anymore?”

Harry shrugs. “Sometimes you do the work and the work leads you apart. We’re partners still, it just looks different now.”

John feels that land in his chest and a hollow note rings out through him.

“And what if one of you finds someone else?”

“Then we’ll make space for that.”

“Together?”

“Or apart. It’s not that it’s not hard and painful, but it’s worth it. To do it right.”

John hangs his head in his hands, he feels wrung out. That’s it. That’s his biggest fear. That Sherlock will decide that he doesn’t need John anymore. That John’s more complicated than a dildo or a smoke or a hit and and that once he realises that, once he sees how lacking John is, how uninteresting, he’ll leave.

“How do you do it right?” John’s voice breaks, uneven, words ragged.

Harry shrugs sympathetically. “You have to figure that out for yourselves. John, you have to talk to him.”

There’s a noise in the stairwell that leads down to the back alley behind him, a footfall on a squeaky board, and all three of them sit up straighter.

“Oi, what the fuck?” Harry says, as John moves to the top of the stairs and looks down.

To see the hem of a long black coat swing through the door before it clicks shut behind it.

John’s blood turns to ice.

His feet leaden as he sprints down the stairs.

_Nononononononononononononononononononononono_

_Oh, God, no._

He throws the door open and steps out into the back alley. Sherlock is ahead, to John’s right, turning the corner.

John shouts his name, but it comes out strangled and hoarse, whipped away by the wind.

John sprints. The night air bites through his jumper, his trousers. He realises, as if he’s watching himself from afar, that he’s only in his socks.

When John gets to the corner he keeps running, desperately scanning the dark street. Sherlock isn’t on the pavement. John doesn’t see him in any of the cabs stopped at the red light.

He’s gone.


	11. Chapter Eleven

Panic like a tin drum beating in place of his heart.

_Ratatatatatatatatat._

Icy sweat in the small of his back, his fringe, his palms, the backs of his knees. His mind a white static thrum.

The cab ride is interminably long.

Socked feet freezing on the pavement. John hops from left to right as he pays. The flat above him is dark.

John can’t get traction on the stairs. He almost falls twice.

He races into the sitting room, does a quick cursory glance, only to find it empty. He is just stepping into the kitchen when he feels the air behind him move.

The hair on the back of his neck lifts, prickling, and every instinct John has tells him to spin and strike out, but he represses it. Stays still.

Sherlock stands for a moment behind John and John can smell him, can feel his coat just brushing against the backs of John’s calves.

The deep rock roll of his voice cleaves the silence in two, thunder rending it, reshaping it.

“From the first moment I met you I knew that you couldn’t see yourself.”

John closes his eyes.

“Not accurately.”

Breath brushing against the nape of John’s neck. He’s so close.

John trembles.

“There were whole parts of yourself you refused to acknowledge. It confounded me for a long time.”

“Sherlock,” John exhales.

“You are a doctor. A captain. A war hero. You are a man of nerve and skill and courage and wit and yet you see none of it.”

John sways and he spreads his feet wider, socks squeaking on the lino, to better distribute his weight. To better prop him up.

“I died for that man and it’s that man I wanted to marry.”

The past tense punches John in the solar plexus, forces the air out of his open mouth in a quiet moan.

John fists his hands and wills his knees not to buckle.

“But he doesn’t trust himself to be enough and therefore can never trust me to tell him that he is.”

John’s heart in his ears, pounding.

“You have been lying to me this entire time.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“ _No_.”

“You have never forgiven me for what I did to you.”

“Sherlock—“ John starts to turn, but the icy clip of Sherlock’s voice stops him.

“Stay where you are.”

John freezes, facing the door leading out to the landing, half turned, still unseeing.

“I have spent this entire week trying to figure out what it was about Au Lit that bothered you.” Sherlock laughs bitterly and sneers, “But it’s really just another part of yourself that you refuse to acknowledge. Did you think if we just got married we wouldn’t have to be queer anymore? You wouldn’t have to say the words gay or bisexual, you could just tell people you were married. Problem solved.”

John turns and fists his hands in Sherlock’s shirt, drags him in.

“Shut up,” he gasps. “Shut up before we both say things we’re going to regret.”

John drags his face up Sherlock’s chest and tips his chin so that they are panting raggedly into each other’s mouths.

“Please.” John breathes. “Please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Last night, last night, for some reason, I just…and I didn’t even really realise until I was sitting there with Harry and Clara what was going on with me. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you first. I should have.”

Sherlock’s mouth is a snarl of pain and fury. His words, a scalpel, eviscerating. “You’ve been uncomfortable the entire time. I’ve been brushing it off, explaining it away. Well, I don’t need your pity fucks and I don’t need your pity proposal. And I don’t need your pity to keep me alive. I can do that fine on my own.”

“No.” John will beg. He will do anything it takes. But he can’t. He can’t get enough air. He can’t breathe. Panic is a vice around his chest, squeezing. John sags, lets Sherlock catch some of his weight. “You can’t say that. You can’t. Just give me. A minute. Jesus Christ.”

John’s knees hit the floor, kneecaps screaming, and he winces as the pain shoots down his shins. He leans forward to rest his forehead against the lino between Sherlock’s feet, his fingers curled, knuckling the ground.

“John.”

“Just. Give me. Please.”

Sherlock steps back, steps away from John, and obliterating darkness threatens to engulf John’s vision. It closes in on all sides. He needs to get up and put his head between his legs, but it hurts too god damn much to move. God, he’s pathetic.

No wonder Sherlock is going to leave him.

He is probably out the door already.

John collapses on his side, draws his knees up to his chest and fixes his eyes on a crack running up the wall opposite him. He traces it, over and over, over and over, like Underground maps on the Tube, taking short breaths that break apart like shrapnel in his chest, pain lodging in the back of his throat and breastbone.

He’s alone.

This is it.

His greatest fear realised.

Sherlock has left.

John has hurt him and Sherlock has left.

There isn’t anyone left to see him well and truly fall apart.

Just as he’s regaining the ability to breath, the sobbing begins and steals it from him once more.

John’s hands are tucked between his knees so that the tears flow down, over the bridge of his nose to track across his cheek and pool in his hair on the floor.

His blood in his ears shushes loudly, drowning out all sound. His heartbeat in his temples, thud, thud, thud.

The susurration is so strong he almost doesn’t hear, “Get up.”

John turns his head, disbelieving, sure he’s hallucinating.

Sherlock is blur of black against the ceiling, his hair a wild fraying halo around his thin white face which is drawn and grim and it breaks John to see it, he can almost hear his heart snap in two, as Sherlock says, again, coldly, “Get up.”

John pushes up to sitting, it’s the best he can do to settle back against the nearest cupboard. His legs feel like jelly. He doesn’t trust them to hold him up.

He covers his face with his hands for a moment and then drags his fists over his cheeks, wiping up the sticky, snotty mess he’s made of himself. The hair below his left ear is soaked and spiked, he pets it down.

He looks up.

Sherlock looms over him still and hands something down. John, blinded by the harsh fluorescent light behind him, takes it.

Warmth flushes against his palm and he smells Earl Grey.

It almost makes him start crying again.

“Drink,” Sherlock says, before moving away.

Not far.

He deposits his coat onto one of the kitchen chairs and then leans against the wall across from John.

John, comforted by the proximity, takes a sip.

“Christ.” Coughing. “Shit. Fuck.” He sets the cup down before he spills it all. There’s whiskey in the cup, a good ration and John, addled as he is, hadn’t noticed.

Sherlock doesn’t say anything, just stands there, appraising John cooly, with a distance that feels like a knife stuck in John’s ribs.

“I understand if you want to leave, but if you’d let me explain—“

Sherlock cuts him off. “I’m not going anywhere. It’s you who leaves when things get confrontational.”

John drops his chin and breathes the steam from his cup. It’s nothing he doesn’t deserve. He can take it.

When he feels like he can he raises his eyes to meet Sherlock’s. The iciness of his gaze hits John like a slap, making his cheeks sting with a rush of blood.

He starts slow, picking his way carefully, “I don’t know what you heard, but I can imagine how horrible it was to hear it.”

Sherlock maintains a stony silence, giving nothing for John to read.

“I should have told you. I know that.” John shakes his head. “All I wanted was to avoid hurting you and I couldn’t even manage that.”

“Skip the dramatics please. Stick to the facts,” Sherlock interjects, his voice curt and annoyed.

“The facts, yeah.” John huffs a sardonic laugh and draws his fingertips over his left eyebrow, trying to marshal his thoughts, but he doesn’t have time because Sherlock interrupts him again.

“Like how you feel obligated to have sex with me in some misguided attempt to keep me from using again.”

John swallows thickly. Bends down and takes a sip. The whiskey burns on the way down, but John can feel faint flickers of warmth take hold in his stomach. It steadies him. Enough for him to meet Sherlock’s indifferent gaze once more.

“I can see how you could think that from what you heard, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Deep down you have to know that.”

“I know nothing. I can’t trust any of it now. At what point did it become about keeping me clean? Was it from the very beginning?”

The unfairness of it rankles. “Now who’s being dramatic?” John snaps.

“When did you decide having to suck cock was an even exchange for keeping me alive?”

“Enough!”

The word rings through the room, bouncing off the tile, leaving a hollow silence behind it.

John struggles to get his voice under control. He has to clear his throat twice before he can get it out. “I am sorry you had to find out this way, but you have it wrong and I need you to let me explain.”

Sherlock simply glares at him.

John wilts under it. Snakes in his belly, he feels bile rise in his throat. He swallows against his gorge and it squelches loudly in the quiet of the flat.

How does he make Sherlock understand?

John decides to go with what is at the heart of it all. “I love you. I love you so much and I lost you, I buried you, I grieved you, and I am terrified, completely and utterly terrified, of losing you again.”

“And when have I given you the impression that I was in danger of that? When have I ever given you the impression that I would do that to you again?”

“You told me that if you stop moving you’ll die!” John shouts, his blood pounding up to throb in his cheeks and forehead. He pushes himself up to standing and reels, lightheaded. He puts out a hand and grips the back of one of the chairs. “You told me that you use sex to turn your brain off, that that’s how you keep from going mad! What the fuck was I supposed to think?”

“I told you those things in confidence because I trusted you not to use them against me. And now I find out that that’s all you did. That this—” Sherlock tugs at the ring on his finger. He holds it up. “That this was just to placate me. Marriage as placebo.”

“No,” John says, as Sherlock carelessly tosses it onto the kitchen table where it bounces to the middle. John’s heart seizes as it clatters about.

John feels like exploding, but he keeps his head. Barely. His voice is raw and cracks every other word, but he manages it. “I did the best I could. You know I don’t have any more idea of what I’m doing than you do when it comes to this. I tried to show you that you were loved. I tried to show you that you were safe. Because you are. You are loved and you are safe with me. And I fucked up. I fucked up and betrayed your trust. I was trying to figure out what I was feeling before I talked to you so that I wouldn’t hurt you or confuse you.”

Sherlock shakes his head, disgust and anger warring on his face. “You won’t tell anyone we’re engaged. I’m like a guilty secret you’re keeping. It makes me doubt whether or not you even want this. Whether you even want me! You took the time to bare your soul to your sister who you’re not even particularly close too and couldn’t tell me. What does that say, John? Tell me. Because to me it seems like you don’t trust me.”

“Sherlock, the only reason we’re shouting at each other right now is that I love you so much, so bloody much, Sherlock, that I don’t want you to die. That’s why we’re fighting! Because I was telling myself this whole time that I could be enough for you. That I could take the place of cocaine. That I could do what it did for you. And I was stupid enough.” John breaks then. Tears rolling down his cheeks again. “I was stupid enough to keep from you the fact that I’m completely out of my fucking depth and that I think we need help.”

John can’t.

He can’t hold it together anymore.

He drops his face into his hand and starts to shake.

The first thing he feels is Sherlock’s hand sliding up the side of his throat to grip the back of his neck. The other hand wraps itself around John’s shoulder and draws him in, until John’s forehead is pressed against his sternum, getting his shirt front wet with his tears.

Sherlock just holds him like that for long minutes that John loses track of. Just holds him while John sobs quietly in his arms.

John doesn’t have anything left. This is it. If Sherlock leaves John has no idea what he will do. He can see his life smashed in slivers on the ground reflecting back at him distorted, fun-house images of the future they had planned to share together.

“Fine.”

John, palms pressed to Sherlock’s chest, pushes himself just far enough away to look up at him. “Fine what?”

“Fine. I agree. We should get help.”

John, flabbergasted, stares at him with his mouth hanging open.

“What?” Sherlock says. “I told you I’m not going anywhere.”

John gestures. “You just threw your ring on the table!”

"Yes, well, it got your attention didn't it?" And John, who knows all about Sherlock's flair for the dramatic and how he uses escalation as a tactic to coerce confessions from suspects, isn't all together surprised by the childish antics.

John bends over the table and retrieves the ring.

He holds it up.

But Sherlock doesn’t give him his hand.

John looks into his eyes.

“You’re not a guilty secret. I _hate_ that I made you feel like that. I’ve been struggling with accepting all the new parts of myself. I feel like the world doesn’t have a right to know who I go to bed with, why does it matter to them? But I know that Harry would tell me that’s my privilege as a white man and how nice for me that being with you won’t have any immediate and devastating consequences. I admit I need help finding my place in this community and in this new identity, but god Sherlock, I’m not ashamed of you. Never you. I love you and I’m so fiercely proud that you’re mine. That you let me love you. I want to spend all the rest of my days with you. I want to chase you around London until we’re too old and tired to leg it. I want to grow old with you in Sussex. I want to go to earth with you, be buried next to you. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you.”

Encouraged by the bright sheen in Sherlock’s eyes, John lifts Sherlock’s hand in his.

“Sherlock, will you marry me?”

Sherlock looks into John’s eyes and John hopes he sees there how much John means it, John hopes it scours away any doubt Sherlock has about how John feels for him. A moment passes that stretches for an eternity before Sherlock swallows and nods.

John slides the ring back on his finger and then threads their hands together, rocking up on his toes to press his salt-tacky lips to Sherlock’s.

“I want to trust you,” John says softly as he pulls away.

Sherlock’s eyes flick back and forth between his.

“Can I trust that you won’t hurt yourself?”

Sherlock shakes his head slowly. The lines around his eyes dug deep in a grimace. “I want to say yes. But I don’t know if that’s a promise I can keep. This isn’t something I always have complete control over.”

John’s heart: ripping along it’s seams.

“I can promise you that I will tell you if I feel like I’m getting to that place again.”

“Will you be able to? Will you recognise it?”

“Yes.” And the simplicity and the certainty with which he says it makes John ache all over like a bruise pressed.

“And you’re willing to go talk to someone with me?”

Sherlock nods. “If it will help us communicate better and help us avoid situations like this in the future, then the logical answer is yes.”

Sherlock bends down, nudging his mouth tentatively to John’s, and John kisses him again. And again.

“Can I trust you not to run around behind my back, talking to everyone about me?”

“Yes.”

They both know that trust is not so easily rebuilt. If Reichenbach taught them anything, it was how precious trust is, how easily broken, and how earnestly it must be re-won.

It will take them time to repair what happened, but, John thinks, at least they’re both willing to try.

“Let me take you to bed.” Sherlock’s hands are inching up John’s sides, slipping beneath the hem of John’s jumper, presses soft touches to his skin, as he claims kiss after softening kiss from John’s mouth. “I want to touch you. I can tell you better with my hands.”

“All right.” John rubs at his swollen eyes, his cheeks. “I feel like I could sleep for a year.”

John follows Sherlock into their room and collapses onto the side of the bed, bending down to peel off his ruined socks.

“Wait,” Sherlock says, turning back towards the door and speaking over his shoulder. “Let me help. Just hang on a tick.”

John falls back on top of the bed and closes his eyes, letting the scent of home ground him.

He hears Sherlock come back in and set something heavy down on the floor beside his right foot. He struggles back up to sitting.

Sherlock takes John’s left foot in his hand and deftly rolls his sock, down and off.

He makes a tsking sound when he sees the state of the sole of John’s foot.

“You cut yourself.” He dips a flannel into the bowl of hot water and wrings it out, before pressing it to John’s toes and gently rubbing.

John curls his toes into the warmth of the cloth. “Yes, well, some berk broke into my sister’s flat and I had to chase him out into the street without my coat or my shoes.”

“You could have gone back for them.”

“No, no I couldn’t have. We need to talk about that, by the way. You can’t just go around picking locks. Did you even try knocking?”

“I had something to give you. I wanted to surprise you. I thought that maybe the party was still going since you didn’t text me back.”

“What did you need to give me?”

Sherlock shakes his head as he bends over John’s other foot, mumbling something that sounds like, “Tomorrow.”

John reaches out and strokes his hand over Sherlock’s hair as Sherlock washes his feet.

“You don’t have to do that. Come up here.”

Sherlock doesn’t pay him any mind though and runs the flannel over his ankles, wiping away the traces of mud that had splattered onto his skin.

When he’s finished he sits back on his heels and helps John to stand up.

He flicks John’s belt open with efficiency, unbuttons him, and draws down the zip in two more quick motions. Fingers hooked into John’s pants, Sherlock drags the lot down his hips.

John, careful with his knees, steps out of them, and then John is pulling his jumper, button-down, and vest off over his head, Sherlock helping when John is struggling a bit to get his cuffs undone.

Naked, John stands before Sherlock, who looks up at John from his place on his knees.

“It’s not much, but what’s here is yours,” John says, trying not to squirm under the scrutiny.

“Your sister was wrong you know.”

“Hmmm?” John asks, passing his hand over the midnight taffeta mass of his hair.

“You are a hero,” Sherlock says. “You do save lives. You’ve saved mine countless times.”

“Sherlock, you don’t need to—“

Sherlock stands, graceful and fluid, with none of the twinging aches and pains John is afflicted with. John is too tired to feel jealous.

“What are you…?” John asks, as Sherlock moves around behind him, guiding him a step out so that John is standing in front of Sherlock’s full length mirror.

“You don’t see yourself properly,” Sherlock whispers, standing right behind John and resting his hands on John’s bare shoulders. “But I see you. I see you, John.”

John refuses to burst into tears anymore that night. He blinks rapidly against the burn, meeting Sherlock's gaze in the glass and ignoring how uncomfortable he is.

“You’ve devoted your whole life to healing people, to helping them, with hardly any thanks or recognition. Including from me.” Sherlock sighs. “This whole week you’ve been willing to try anything I’ve asked you to. Even when it was scaring you. I don’t want you to have to do that. I want you to tell me when I’m pushing you too far. I have to be able to trust you to do that, John. To say no to me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Sherlock buries his nose in the hair at the crown of his head.

“I love lying behind you at night, holding you, just so that I can tuck my nose right here.”

He slides his nose down through the silver strands to nuzzle at John’s nape.

“And I love to kiss you here.”

John shivers and presses back reflexively into the warmth of Sherlock’s body.

“It always makes you do that, push into me, like a cat.”

John smiles and lets his head fall back against Sherlock’s shoulder, closing his eyes as Sherlock winds his arms around John’s waist and holds him close.

“I’m not replacing you with cocaine,” Sherlock says quietly into his ear. “I’ve obviously gone about this all wrong if that’s how you felt.”

Sherlock takes a deep breath and John waits for him to go on.

“I wanted to show you what I do so that you understood. But I’m able to take care of that on my own, John. You don’t need to be involved if you’re uncomfortable.”

“I want to be involved. I—“

“Just let me finish, ok?”

John closes his mouth and nods.

“Open your eyes.”

John meets Sherlock’s eyes in the mirror.

“You are not a drug or a substitute for the work, but you save me from myself, just the same, just by loving me. You are essential to my wellbeing, both mental and physical. There is nothing I can conceive of that would make me walk away from you. There will be hardships, there will be misunderstandings, but I want you to know that I’m committed to you. That I’m willing to work on myself and on us because Harry was right about that. All that matters is that you’re willing to work on lessening your fucked-upness.”

“I don’t want to change you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock screws up his face. “What is the point of life if you’re not willing to change? Change is happening constantly, we just don’t always notice it. It’s incremental. Every month I go to the doctor to collect that scrap of paper that says I’m clean it gets a little easier to not turn back. Every time I come home and see you sitting in your chair I know it’s worth it. I’m willing to change for that. Are you?”

John’s heart swells and bursts, a hot honey rush surging sweet through his veins. “Yeah.”

“Then I would say that our first big argument was a success wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose it was.”

“Now, I tell you what we are going to do. I am going to lay you down on our bed and I’m going to ask you where you would like to be touched and then I am going to give you the greatest orgasm of your life. How does that sound?”

John laughs, turning in Sherlock’s arms to kiss his smiling mouth.

“The greatest orgasm of my life, huh?”

“Well, I’m certainly going to give it my best shot. Lie down, please.”

Sherlock undresses while John settles back against the pillows.

Naked, he clambers up and kneels between John’s legs.

Grinning up at him, John says, “We could just go to sleep. I’m exhausted.”

Sherlock shakes his head, looking determined. “I’m not like all those other ungrateful wretches. I’m going to say thank you, and I’m going to do it properly.”

“With an orgasm.”

Sherlock hums and reaches forward to place his hands on John’s hips, eyes roving eagerly, reading John's body for clues.

“What would you like?”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be revoltingly vanilla for your tastes.”

“Vanilla can be good too.”

“Come here and kiss me then.”

“That’s it? That’s all you want?”

“No, but it’s a good start, yeah?”

And it was.

It really, really was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! \0/ Thank you so much to you all for going on this journey with me. I penguin track you <3 <3


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We come to the end of the road... and it's fitting to end it where it all started, inspired by a cracky post I saw on Tumblr. I hope starrysummer-nights doesn't mind that I appropriated their head canon too much. If you want a little preview (and didn't get that from the tags hehe) [here is the original post that set fire to my brain](http://starrysummer-nights.tumblr.com/post/161824874679/day-14-sherlock-wants-a-replica-of-johns-dick).
> 
> Also, I've exercised some artistic license in regards to the dildo. I did find a dildo with foreskin that moved, however it came with the caveat that it was very, very hard to keep clean. I'm also not sure how easy it would be to find someone to make you a custom dildo, but hey, this is Sherlock Holmes and if they do it for porn stars, I'm sure it wasn't too hard for him to convince them to immortalise his John ;). I hope you'll allow me some wiggle room. Thank you in advance.

Six days later…

 

_It’s here! It’s here! Meet me at Au Lit at 10?_

_On my way. <3_

 

The bar is dark, lit by black light, the dance floor a kaleidoscope blur of bright colours, bodies and faces painted in neon UV paint, white shirts writhing eerily, and teeth flashing like a strobe light as people sing and smile while they dance.

The music is a thick bass throb in John’s ears, mirroring the beat of his heart in his chest.

 _Thump thump thump thump_.

He sits quietly, one hand wrapped around his glass, his thumb swiping through the condensation in slow, deliberate arcs. The liquid inside is pulpy and thick, apricot coloured, and noxiously sweet. John, delighting in the inappropriate NYE’s menu, and feeling the heady thrum of anticipation, orders another.

He’s on his third Cockmonster when he sees Sherlock approaching through a break in the crowd.

John swivels on his stool and greets him with an appreciative glance skated up and down the entire delicious length of him, taking in each and every svelte inch. He’s trim and handsome as ever. Dressed in his black suit with his obscenely tight black shirt that should be illegal, strutting with his pristine curls and his decadently pink lips and the marble column of his neck stretching out of his collar. God, his neck. John licks his lips and spreads his palms over the drums of his thighs, mouth dry, heart speeding up.

_Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump._

“Hello, Angel,” Sherlock greets the bartender first, raising his voice to be heard over the music, before turning to face John.

John, who has been waiting for the prat for the better part of an hour, slides his hands inside Sherlock’s suit coat, the silk lining slick against the backs of his hands, and fists them in his shirt, dragging him in to snog him deep and wet and thorough.

“How many of these has he had?” Sherlock asks, his gaze sliding up to Angel who stands on the other side of the bar watching and Angel’s face breaks apart into a wide smile which shines in his handsome dark face.

“Three. He’s at the max, but he’s doing all right. I’ve been keeping an eye on him,” Angel says, with a wink. “By the way, I hear congratulations are in order…” Sherlock glances to John in surprise before he nods his head at Angel and reaches over to shake his outstretched hand. “You two look like you make each other happy,” Angel notes approvingly, before he moves down the bar to serve a man dressed up in drag.

“You taste of peaches,” Sherlock tells John, scrunching up his nose in an adorable way that makes John’s heart fizz. Both of them ignoring how pleased they both are at what Angel said. And at what John had revealed to him. The moment passes them by, touching them both differently. It’s still fragile between them. It’s easier to just joke about the drinks. John tips his head back and parts his lips as Sherlock dips down to take another slow, leisurely taste, sucking a little on John’s tongue in a way that makes John more than a little dizzy. “And pineapple. And rum.”

“Mmm, it’s called a Cockmonster. You want one?”

Sherlock eyes glint at him mischievously.

“A Furry Cunt? Or maybe an Auld Lang Schlong?”

Sherlock laughs at that. “I think we have more than enough cock to keep us busy tonight.” Sherlock glances around them surreptitiously before tucking his mouth against John’s ear. “Do you have it?”

John nods and they both grin. Giddy. John trails his hands over Sherlock’s hips to cup his arse and urge Sherlock close enough for John to kiss the freckles on his throat. He smells intoxicatingly good. John is momentarily grateful that Au Lit has a three drink max and no alcohol allowed in the hotel rooms. John could get drunk just on Sherlock alone.

“What room?” Purred into John’s ear and fuck if John isn’t on his way to fully hard already.

“304.”

“Let’s go.”

John knocks back the rest of his drink and stands. Taking Sherlock’s extended hand in his, John follows him through the packed dance floor and down a hallway which dumps them out in front of a bank of elevators.

Inside, John is shoved up against the mirrored wall almost instantly. With a thigh pressed between his legs and caged in by two strong arms, he’s pinned.

“Hi,” Sherlock says softly, brushing the tips of their noses together, letting their lips just skim across each other in a tease of breath and soft supple skin.

“Hi,” John says, a bit breathless as he rocks against Sherlock’s leg, moaning quietly at the friction as his pants and his trousers rub against his cock, which is continues to fatten up quite demandingly behind his flies.

“Case went well?” John enquires equanimously.

“Yes.” Nosing down to John’s ear. “I want to see it.”

“It’s in the room.”

Sherlock groans in disappointment, soft and low, feeding it directly into John’s ear again, and John feels it spike down his spine to burn low in his belly.

But tonight isn’t about John. It’s about Sherlock and John, it’s about reconnecting, it’s about re-establishing, so John sets his foot down on the outside of Sherlock’s and spins them, trapping the taller man against the wall adjacent. Elbows resting against Sherlock’s shoulders, fingering the soft ends of his curls, John noses at his pulse, brushes his lips over the line of his jaw.

“You know, out of all the gifts we each chose to give each other, you have to admit this one is the best,” John murmurs, testing the quality of Sherlock’s creamy skin with his lips.

“You’re brilliant,” Sherlock whispers, sincere for once, and John smiles against his warm skin.

“This is going to solve so many of our problems. Having two of me at the ready.”

Sherlock nods, his breath coming in short little bursts, his hands clenching and unclenching, spasming in the small of John’s back.

“Anytime you need seeing to, I’ll be there,” John says, licking into Sherlock’s ear. Pushing the wet tip of his tongue inside and letting his breath cool the skin before he does it again. “I’ll be there for you, I’ll be so hard and good for you, Sherlock, for whatever you need.”

Sherlock moans his name and if that isn’t John’s favourite sound in the entire universe he doesn’t know what is.

Just then the elevator dings and John pushes them apart, tugging on Sherlock’s hand to get him moving, as they both weave, a little unsteady, with cocks heavy and aching between their legs, down the hallway to their room.

Once John has got the door open Sherlock heads straight inside, unscrewing one of the bottles of water that sits on top of the dresser, and taking long, quenching swallows. John walks in slower, depositing his sports coat, keys, wallet, and mobile onto one of the armchairs and end tables that sit in front of the TV. The hotel room is done in black and silver and white, tasteful and simple. A large King sized bed against one wall with a wooden headboard that John had been assured by the hotel staff was firmly bolted to the wall, which were soundproof. Privacy was a top concern and they took it very seriously.

John thinks for a moment about the name, _Au Lit_. In bed. It’s where people are at their most vulnerable. Sleeping or fucking, they’re at their most unprotected. The entire concept of this place, John thinks, is to encourage people to delve into that place. To get to know their bodies and find pleasure in them. To get in touch with their desires and feel empowered by them. To find people to enjoy their bodies with. To consent to transformative experiences, facilitated through toys, sexuality, acceptance, exploration, connection, support.

After the fight with Sherlock John was able to let go some of that fear that was holding him back from truly feeling a part of the community _Au Lit_ serves. Not that he doesn’t still feel like an outsider, but accepting it about himself, that needed time, and he needed to find an authentic way in. Wanting to find that way had made him bold enough to offer his services at the next clinic _Au Lit_ was putting on, for HIV testing and counselling. Angel, a trans man who was pursuing a degree in nursing, had given him his first drink on the house in thanks for volunteering. John can see why it was such a safe place for Sherlock to land.

He wants to find the same succour in it as Sherlock does. So he’s here. And he’s out. And they’re together. And they’re engaged. And John doesn’t want there to be any doubt about that. It makes John hold himself differently. He feels more confident, more like his old self, in control.

John walks around and sits down on the sofa, his eyes meeting Sherlock’s in the mirror on the wall in front of him.

He’s nervous, John can tell from the way he’s frozen where he stands. It hurts for a minute, that hesitation, that uncertainty, but that’s why they’re here. They’re rebuilding trust and the only way to do that is through consecutive steps forward.

“Get the box,” John says, nodding his head to his left, indicating the black matte box that sits next to the water bottles on the gleaming dresser top.

John watches in the mirror as Sherlock collects the box and comes forward, around the side of the sofa. John indicates the coffee table with a tilt of his head. “Sit down.”

Sherlock does. Right across from John. His knees in between John’s open knees. His big hands holding the box like it’s something precious. John looks at him, savouring the delicate rose blush on his cheeks, the wet pink of his parted lips, the inky pitch of his lashes framing pale blue eyes.

“Open it,” John says, keeping his voice low and deep and soft because even he can read how it makes Sherlock shiver expectantly.

Sherlock sets the lid aside and unfolds the fuchsia tissue paper.

The awe-filled sound of surprise he makes when he sees it makes John smile.

And when he draws it out of the box, the heavy length of it held reverently in the palm of his hand, John makes one of his own.

“Fuck me, it’s gorgeous,” he says, a little shocked.

Sherlock is too engrossed to answer. He turns the dildo over and over in his hands.

“How does it feel?” John asks.

“It’s an almost exact replica of your dick,” Sherlock says matter-of-factly. Looking up at John, he grins. “It’s magnificent.”

“Give it here.” John reaches for it.

John’s not sure what he expected, but the uncut cock in his hand far exceeds his expectations.

It’s him.

It’s him when he’s hard.

Down to the very last vein and ridge, it’s perfect. It even closely captures the texture of John’s foreskin and when John thumbs at it it rolls down the shaft fluidly to reveal the the exact flare of his head. Only the bollocks that hang below it are an approximation. John had been very clear about where they could and could not put plaster, after all.

John glances up to see Sherlock, hands clasped between his knees, gazing at the dildo, his eyes half-lidded and unfocused with dark, dreamy lust.

“Would you like a taste?” John asks and Sherlock’s eyes snap up to meet his eagerly as he nods.

“Come here.”

Sherlock leans forward, warm hands sliding up John’s thighs to brace himself over John’s lap, as John sets the thick, peachy prick down between his legs to rest on the suction cup that’s attached to the other end.

“Well go on then. Give us a kiss,” John says, threading his right hand into Sherlock’s hair and urging him gently downwards.

Sherlock purses his lips, plump and red and plushly pouted and softly touches them to the silicone tip that’s peaking up from above the foreskin. There’s a pink divot in the center and Sherlock kisses it softly, letting the roundness of it it open him slowly as he works his way around it. John’s hips push up reflexively at the sight of that mouth perched so close to his real cock and he can feel blood pool, hot and insistent, at the tops of his thighs.

“Lick it,” John says, voice hoarse, lost in the heat of Sherlock’s palms seeping through John’s jeans, and the way his thumbs are making wide rhythmic strokes, dipping into the crease where John’s thighs meet his body.

And there is his tongue, licking out to drag across the head and then down the shaft, refracting the foreskin just the tiniest bit, the tip of his tongue following the thread of a bulging vein, down, down, down to the plastic pair of bollocks and John can’t. He is only human and he can’t wait any longer, and why should he? It’s ludicrous to wait any longer. Why should the dildo have all the fun? This is why they’re here. To enjoy the fake cock together. So John doesn’t wait, he reaches for his belt and undoes it. Lets it clatter loudly. Lets it tumble open at his sides.

Sherlock slides to his knees as John lifts his hips to unbutton and unzip, to push and to tug, and then there, there, the air is rushing cool and harshly bright over his burning wet skin, but his hand is warm and sweat-slick and he pushes his fist down around himself, tight, tight, tight. So good and tight, to grip it by the base and cant it out.

Lining it up with it’s twin.

Sherlock makes a muffled sound of plaintive need to see them both up against each other for comparison. It should, John thinks, keep him busy for a few seconds at least.

John slouches down, spreading his legs as wide as his jeans will allow. The motion nudges the dildo forward, tipping it towards Sherlock, threatening to topple it over, and Sherlock reaches out and, genius that he is, takes them both in his hand.

“Oh.” John shudders as the silicone scrapes rough and cold against his skin. “Lube,” he gasps, nodding his head towards the box.

“Right,” Sherlock says, turning.

It makes a world of difference. Both cocks slipping slippery perfect against each other, foreskins shining as they glide up and down in Sherlock’s strong grip. John drops his chin down to his chest and cups Sherlock’s face with both hands. Stroking his thumbs over bladed cheekbones, over to the soft lobes of his ears, and back. Love in his touch, love in his eyes.

“I love you,” he whispers, love in his words.

Sherlock meets his eyes with such naked vulnerability that John feels a wave of tenderness so obliterating it steals his breath.

It feels like falling in love all over again.

The morning after their big fight, after Sherlock had promised John the best orgasm of his life and John had been too hollowed out to even get it up, they had driven to Sussex and, once there, still in the early blue tinged hours of Christmas Day, they had laid down in their bed facing each other.

“I want to be more honest,” John had said.

“I want to be less afraid,” Sherlock had said.

They went back and forth, trading wishes for the upcoming year. It had ended up devolving into giggles and wrestling and kisses and lovely orgasms for both and the idea for this night had been born out of that place of silliness and simple truths. But that’s what John loves about them. They’re more than a little ridiculous when they’re together and this idea, this idea to have John’s cock immortalised, for Sherlock to use when he needed release and John needed space, it’s silly and over the top and 100% _them_ , and John wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sherlock pushes his cheek into John’s hand and says it back to him with his eyes before he leans forward and takes John in his mouth.

John presses into him, bursting, like the thin skin of a bubble, _plop!_ , and John is a puddle, brimming over his borders, all of him spilled out into Sherlock’s touch.

The dildo falls to the side as Sherlock shuffles closer on his knees, opening to distribute his weight, and John, almost incoherently, slips his right foot between Sherlock’s thighs and presses the sole to the hot bulge in Sherlock’s trousers.

Sherlock moans around John’s cock as he slowly bobs up and down, letting the head of John’s cock rub against the ribbed plane of his palate.

“You want to suck me and get fucked by me at the same time?” John says, low.

He can feel Sherlock’s response burr against him and John shoves deeper, almost into his throat, just as Sherlock bucks up against him, hips pushing forward, shoving his clothed erection into the arch of John’s foot.

“You want me to fuck you, both at once, my two cocks inside you at the same time?”

Sherlock’s eyes widen and he tries to nod, but chokes and has to pull off.

John leans forward to catch his wet lips. Rubs his toes over the placket of Sherlock’s trousers, feels the precome seeping through to wet his sock.

“You want me to get you ready? You want me to lick your arse and finger you until you’re ready to take us both?”

“John.” He’s dazed and breathing hard. John rubs a little more, loving the feel of Sherlock’s cock rutting against his foot.

John picks up the dildo between them and runs the tip along Sherlock’s bottom lip, both of them bent close together, in a hushed intimate space.

John pushes the cock inside, pulling back a little, but keeping one hand anchored around the back of Sherlock’s neck, just far enough to allow for the angle and watches as the bow of Sherlock’s lips stretches into a pink heart around John’s girth.

“You’re gorgeous,” John breathes, petting the silky hair that curls at Sherlock’s nape. “You’re gorgeous and I can’t wait to see how beautiful you are when you’re taking me from both ends,” John growls, grinding his heel down against the base of Sherlock’s cock and letting his toes sweep over the head, when suddenly Sherlock’s eyes squeeze shut and a gush of warm liquid spurts, wet and warm and sticky, through the wool.

“Did you just…?” John asks, amazed.

Sherlock, cheeks stained a brilliant cherry red, lets the dildo slip from his mouth and collapses into John’s lap, hiding his face in John’s hip.

“Oh, my god, you’re incredible.” John strokes his hair, watching his ribs expand and contract as he breathes.

“Mshk fhd fjdh shhkkk me.”

“What was that?”

Sherlock slowly turns his head so that his cheek is resting on John’s belly. “I said, you know I can’t withstand it when you talk dirty to me.”

John huffs a laugh and puts his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders, pushing him up to kneeling once more. “Go wash up and take off your clothes. I’ll meet you in bed in five minutes.”

Sherlock still looks blissed out so John leans in and kisses him, giving his arse a little slap to get him moving.

John watches him wobble off to the bathroom before he begins to gather what he’ll need for the rest of the evening ahead. First, he strips, folding up his things and setting them on top of the suitcase he had dropped off earlier in the evening. Then he collects the lube and the dildo from the sofa and climbs up on the bed. It takes him a few tries before he can get the suction cup to seal itself to the headboard, but eventually it does and John once more marvels at the engineering behind it.

He’s on the far side of the bed, untucking the top sheet from where it’s been tucked into the mattress, when Sherlock walks out of the bathroom naked.

He pauses just inside the doorway when he sees John.

He smiles sheepishly. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to—”

John cuts him off. “Don’t you dare fucking apologise.” Sherlock’s mouth twitches and John asks, “You all right?” To which Sherlock nods, cheeks pink. John points to the headboard. “Good. Then get on your hands and knees. My other cock needs sucking.”

A small sizzling jolt runs down Sherlock’s body at the command and he complies quickly, climbing up onto the bed and arranging himself just how John wants him.

“That’s very good,” John says, kneeling on the mattress beside Sherlock and setting his hand in the small of Sherlock’s back. “Now, I want you to close your eyes and imagine you’re alone in your room with just my cock.”

John waits a moment for Sherlock’s lashes to come to rest on his cheeks, waits for some of the tension to leave his body, for his head to sag down between his shoulders, for his knees to slip a little wider.

“You’d know just what to do to make me hard,” John lowers his voice to a murmur, sitting close enough for Sherlock to feel him, hear him, touch him if he needs to.

“What would you do first?” John coaxes softly, wanting Sherlock to join in.

“You like it when I push the tip of my tongue into your slit to taste you.”

Fuck.

John swallows, his throat suddenly parched. “Yeah, I do. Show me.”

So Sherlock opens his eyes, slitted, lazy and dark like a cat’s, and wraps the dildo in his hand, props it up for him to reach out with his tongue and—

“Oh, fuck yeah,” John breathes, blood pounding through his body as Sherlock probes inside John’s dick to uncover every secret flavour.

Sherlock, tongue out, licks all around the head, his hand pulling the foreskin down so that the glans pops out.

“And what if there were two of me in the room?” John asks. “What would you imagine me doing to you then?”

Sherlock holds the dildo in his hand and pops off with a wet sound to say, with spit shiny swollen lips, “What you said earlier.”

“And what was that?” John prompts, wanting him to say it.

“That you would…” Sherlock squirms a little on his knees, hips swaying and back bowing in a way that John supposes is supposed to be a clue.

“Yeah?”

Sherlock makes a disgruntled noise and pushes his arse into the air.

John runs his hand down from his back to cup his cheek, but that’s all.

“What would I be doing if there were two of me in the room? What would you imagine the other me to be doing while you were busy sucking one of me off?”

Roughed up, “You’d lick me.”

“Where?”

“My arse.”

John hums, a low rumble in his chest, and moves around behind Sherlock to spread him open.

John thumbs at the dark puckered skin of his hole.

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

Sherlock’s head has dropped down again, it hangs, heavy, curls falling forward. As John eases himself down onto his elbows he can see through Sherlock’s spread legs: the dark hanging weight of his soft sheathed cock and the bristling sac of his balls, the trembling plane of his stomach rising and falling, the dusky knots of his nipples, the tip of Sherlock’s nose and the flush of his lips as he breathes deeply.

John slides a pillow beneath Sherlock’s hips and helps him rest some of his weight on it.

John holds him open and leans in, to brush his lips over the short brown hairs, smelling the deep, nose tingling musk of Sherlock’s body. John gives him an impetuous kiss and them slaps his hands down on both cheeks, not hard, but enough to make a satisfying sm-ack, just so he can watch them wobble and blush and dimple, and to hear the surprised little sound Sherlock makes, shocked and keening. John leans back in and nibbles at the place where Sherlock’s arse meets his thighs, marking him with the red shape of John’s mouth as he moves over the downy white flesh, sucking and biting in turn, kissing into the crack, and smoothing his hands over Sherlock’s cheeks, manipulating them with his fingers.

John grips him, two handfuls. His fingertips sinking into his skin like the most pliable, supple dough.

John pulls him apart.

A ripple of anticipation passes down Sherlock’s body, pricking the skin on the back of his thighs in goosebumps, and John can hear his panting filling the room.

“Sherlock,” John says, letting his breath play over his most sensitive skin so that Sherlock shivers and rocks back, searching for contact. “My cock isn’t going to suck itself.”

Sherlock moans and pushes his head up. John watches as he steadies the dildo with his hand and then leans forward and takes the head into his mouth. John, who had softened somewhat while Sherlock was in the bathroom, feels the steady rush of blood pumping in his navel and hardens at the surreal sight of watching Sherlock enthusiastically give him a suck job.

John doesn’t make him wait any longer. He leans in and tucks into the feast that is Sherlock’s truly glorious arse.

Tasting: the salt animal tang of his skin, earthy and warm.

John keeps going. Broad, wet stripes up and down, just circling the rim as it pulses, just begging to be fucked.

John licks down to his seam, nudging his nose against his opening.

Teasing.

Sherlock wiggles his hips in frustration, making noises around the prick in his mouth, and John pulls off to ask what the matter is.

Sherlock whines a little and then pops off.

“You promised to stuff me from both ends,” he whinges.

“You’re a bit impertinent, you know that?” John says, fondly. “Just for that, I should make you wait.”

“Jo- _ohn_.” Petulant. Rocking his hips back into John’s hands. “You want to fuck me too.”

It doesn’t take a genius to have worked that one out.

John can sympathise. He knows how it feels to want everything at once. To want to have your arse eaten out and to be hammered with a nice hard cock at the same time, while also wanting a wet mouth on your dick and a tight hot arsehole to plough. All simultaneously. Sherlock’s in that place of heightened awareness, all electric nerve, when the ache is throbbing through you and the pressure is building inside and all you want is sensation and release. John decides there’s another way to shut him up and promptly buries his face between Sherlock’s cheeks.

Pushes him forward, hips thrusting Sherlock’s thickening cock into the pillow, forcing his mouth back onto John’s cock, and John wishes more than anything he had a mirror.

Wishes he could look over and watch as John shoves into Sherlock’s tight slick mouth while he’s also fucking him with the speared tip of his tongue.

Wishes he could see Sherlock’s reaction when he slides a finger in alongside to open him wider.

Wishes he could feel that deep moan it elicits vibrate around his cock as John pushes in to the back of his throat.

John works two fingers into him, sucking messily at Sherlock’s straining rim as he fingers the satin passage of his body, thrusting in and out and just barely skimming the spot where Sherlock wants him most.

John reaches down and takes himself in hand, stroking in time to Sherlock’s incoherent, cock-muffled moaning. He’s hot and heavy and thick and John isn’t sure he’s ever been this hard.

Enough.

He leaves his fingers inside Sherlock, twisting to feel the clench around his knuckles as Sherlock tries, ineffectually, to pull him deeper, but straightens up and fetches the lube.

With middling success that leaves the top sheet splattered, John aims the bottle and drizzles his cock.

John pulls his foreskin down the shaft and scoots foreword to rub...

_Oh fuck._

Wet,

soaked,

smooth,

hot,

skin.

_Fuck._

Rubbing,

rubbing,

the plum flushed round head up and down the shining crease of his arse.

To push,

to push

the plump cheeks together

and glide

between.

To feel the pleasure swell up the backs of his thighs and pool liquid and shimmery in the small of his back.

To rub, to rub the head against that dark silky spot,

to circle it,

to slap it,

to slap that tight pretty hole with the head of his leaking prick,

to feel it,

the sharp static crackle shoot out under his skin to _buzzzzzzz_ in his brain.

While, above, his cock is sliding in and out of Sherlock’s mouth.

Fingertips digging into the hinge of Sherlock’s body and tugging him up and back so that John, cock in hand, can sink

can sink the tip

just inside.

Can watch

can watch as that tight pretty hole stretches, just as Sherlock’s tight pretty mouth stretches, to swallow him whole.

Just barely

just barely

engulfed in heat,

engulfed in the promise of the burning scorching singing clutch around all of him.

They both breathe, ragged and rough, and John wants him closer, wants to feel him pressed all against him, wants Sherlock to grind down, just like he’s doing now as John has gathered him up so that he perches, rising high above John, as John presses wet kisses to his tacky spine, as Sherlock pushes down, head thrown back, as John reaches around and strokes his chest and belly, rubbing fingertips over the hard beads of his nipples, as Sherlock rides him, hips moving back and forth on John’s desperate cock.

“I want.” Sherlock is gasping for air.

“Yeah. Tell me.”

“I want both of you.”

And God, who is John to deny him that?

“Then take it.”

Sherlock falls forward, down onto his elbows and grabs clumsily at the dildo.

John doesn’t give him a chance to settle, just fucks in deep, shoving Sherlock forward so that John’s pink plastic prick catches against Sherlock’s mouth and drags a sticky line across his cheek.

Sherlock doesn’t even complain.

Just adjusts it so that John is inside him from both directions, plundering Sherlock’s body from both ends.

Every thrust sends Sherlock forward until he chokes and John relents, pulling back so that Sherlock’s body rocks back to follow him, so that he can breathe heavily through his nose.

“You look incredible,” John says, hands splayed on Sherlock’s ribs, thumbs tucked in between the heaving notches. “You’re beautiful, taking both my cocks so well. Such a good slut for my cocks, aren’t you?”

Sherlock moans, eyes closed, jerking his chin in a nod, as John fucks him harder, letting the brutal slap of their thighs fill the room.

“Such a sweet little cock whore,” John says, using phrases that might not have ever occurred to him had Sherlock not spilled that little secret the night before when they were discussing how it would go when the dildo was ready for pick up. That dirty talk drives him mad. The blushing list of words that worked the best. John has proof enough now, seeing as how he hadn’t even properly touched Sherlock and he had come in his pants at a bit of rough suggestion.

To gauge how close he is, John reaches down and around to grip Sherlock and let the rhythm of their bodies stroke him.

“Oh, you’re close again aren’t you?” John murmurs, marvelling once more at Sherlock’s non-existent refractionary period. They hadn’t had sex since Sussex. Wanting to wait for tonight, to ring in the new year right. John can feel it in the tight stones of Sherlock’s bollocks drawn up against his body and the heartbeat drumming at the base of his cock. “You could come like this, getting fucked on both ends, without me even having to touch this lovely hard cock couldn’t you?”

Sherlock groans, loud and heartfelt, and John lets go of him, straightening up and stilling behind him.

John holds Sherlock’s hips and eventually Sherlock lets the dildo slip out of his mouth.

They catch their breath. Sherlock moving his jaw from side to side.

It must be sore.

Poor love.

John eases them both down to the bed so that John is behind him, cock slipping back inside him with an easing handful of cold lube. Sherlock is curled on his side, back to John’s front, arse nestled in the cup of John’s thighs.

John wraps his arms around him and thrusts, slow and lazy, just barely moving his hips.

“John.” He sounds shattered, voice like the strafe of rocks whet against each other rolling through the room.

“I’ve got you,” John says, softly, “you tell me when you’re ready,” and Sherlock grabs his hand to press kisses to John’s fingertips in response.

“I like this,” Sherlock says, his voice reduced to a whisper, as their joined bodies flow together. Seamless. Their borders dissolved. They melt into each other. “I love having you inside me. I wish, sometimes, that we could just stay like this.”

“Yeah.”

“I wish sometimes I could take you inside me,” Sherlock says, voice quivering. “So that you could see yourself through my eyes, could see what you do for me. So that you could understand.”

“I think I’m starting to,” John says quietly.

“Then we wouldn’t have these misunderstandings. If I could just show you.”

“Shhh,” John soothes. “You do show me.”

Sherlock kisses his knuckles, drifts them down to kiss the heart of John’s palm.

His body is trembling against John’s.

“John, I’m close. I need. I _want_.”

“Ok. Ok. Roll up for me.”

Sherlock rolls over onto his stomach and John gasps as his cock slips out of the warmth of his body and into the cold icy crush of the air.

John leans in and kisses Sherlock softly. Gently. Careful of his lips which have been well used.

“On your back,” John says, as he pushes up to unhook the dildo from the headboard.

Sherlock sprawls, cream skin on cream sheets, as John kneels once more between his legs.

“You sure?” John asks, as he picks up the lube. “We could just do this, just me and you.”

“It is just me and you,” Sherlock says affectionately, eyes crinkling up, chins folding up at the fact that John is bit daft and a bit slow and that he finds it absolutely endearing. He runs his hands up the outside of John’s arms. Says, breathing already starting to quicken once more, “I want both of you. I want all of you. I want you to put both your cocks in me, John. I want—“

“Jesus, all right. Fuck me that’s hot.”

John slicks up the dildo.

And pushes it

             s                 l            ow                                  ly

Into Sherlock’s body.

“Good?” He asks, once it’s fully seated.

Sherlock growls in response and pulls John down on top of him and to kiss him quiet.

“Sherlock.”

“Please.”

John uses his fingers first. Slipping one, then two in alongside.

Stretching.

Stretching.

Three.

“Now,” Sherlock gasps, tossing his head on the pillow. “Now.”

John uses probably more lube than necessary, but there’s a nervous knot tied in the bottom of his stomach and he’s more concerned with hurting Sherlock than he is with anything else at the moment. Even the throbbingly demandingly thick cock currently held in his hand.

John moves forward and Sherlock lifts his legs to wrap them encouragingly around John’s waist.

Slowly, slowly.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

John catches himself on one hand, braced on the bed near Sherlock’s right hip.

“Oh my god.”

The pressure is intense, indescribable, exquisite. The walls of Sherlock’s body tight, so tight, so god damn perfectly fisting clenching tight, as Sherlock bears down, bears down, unlocking, and draws him in deeper. And deeper.

“Sherlock, Sherlock.”

“ _John_.”

“Oh, my god.”

Sherlock’s fingers are digging into John’s shoulders, his heels pressed to John’s arse, his head craned, eyes trained on where John’s cocks are splitting him open.

At where John is rocking his cock in and out of the squeeze of Sherlock’s red rimmed hole.

“Move, move,” Sherlock begs, dropping his head back, pleading, reduced to single words. “Hard. Please. Now. Now.”

John pushes in the rest of the way and collapses down on to his elbows. Fingers curling over the edge of the mattress beneath Sherlock’s pillow so that he has the leverage to give him what he needs.

A rough, hard, mind-silencing fuck.

It doesn’t take long before they are both at the shattered edge of their sanity.

They go over together, kissing. Holding each other tight.

“I can’t. I can’t. I’m going to…”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“John.”

“Yeah. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

“John.”

“John.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

"John."

“I love you.”

 

  
**********

 

  
“Where are my cuff links?”

“Here.”

“My tie. Where is the bloody thing. I put it—“

“Here.”

“What the hell is wrong with this button. It won’t—“

“Come here.”

John pushes Sherlock’s hands away and slips the button through it’s hole. He pops the collar and settles Sherlock’s tie around his neck, quickly tying it in a Windsor knot.

“You’re so calm. How are you?”

“Dunno. I feel great.”

“I’m practically shaking and you’re the picture of tranquility. What do you know that I don’t know?”

John laughs and smoothes his hands down Sherlock’s chest, over the lapels, checking for lint, for stray hairs, possibly for ash considering the state of Sherlock’s trembling hands.

“I know I love you. I know I’m marrying you in all of twelve minutes. I know all of our friends and family are outside waiting for us. And that we had better hurry up before they come looking for us. And I know that I can’t wait until all of them are gone and I get to strip you bare and make love to my husband for the first time.”

Outside their open bedroom window the garden below them is alive with the quiet hum of conversation. The air slips in on a soft sea breeze and carries with it the scent of freshly cut grass, apple blossoms in full bloom, and the undercurrent of brine off the ocean. Blue skies strung with cottony clouds stretches out above them and birds chirrup in the background.

Sherlock wraps his arms around John and leans their foreheads together.

“I’m not nervous about _you_.”

“I know,” John says. “What is it then?”

“I want to give you something now. I want to explain. I don’t want to wait.”

“Ok. What is it?”

Sherlock pulls a black box from his pocket and John takes a step back to get a better look.

It’s old. The midnight blue velvet is almost rubbed completely off.

When Sherlock flips it open inside is a gold ring.

“It was my grandmother’s,” Sherlock says, slipping the band out of the notch and tossing the box down onto the bed behind him. “My mother’s mother. This was her house.”

“Yeah,” John says, his eyes flicking up to meet Sherlock’s.

“My father shared a story with me the night I came to find you at Harry’s.” They both wince a little at the memory, now somewhat less painful for the months that have passed since Christmas, but still, it twinges, an ache in a ghost limb, these things they carry around.

“It was a rare lucid moment for him. And so I shared with him that we would be getting married.” Sherlock licks his lips. “And he told me about the woman who lived here with my grandmother, her name was Anne, was really the love of my grandmother’s life. We all knew her as my grandmother’s housekeeper, who had come with her from France, where they had met during the First World War. Anne was British and I loved her dearly when I was a child. She died almost a decade before my grandmother did and now that I think about it, Grand-mere was never the same after that.”

John nods, holding onto Sherlock’s elbows as he speaks, holding him close.

“My father told me that Anne and my grandmother were married in all but the law. And he became quite agitated when Mycroft tried to stop him from opening the safe in his room. They exchanged words and soon Mycroft was put in his place and my father retrieved this box from inside.

“It was Anne’s. She used to wear it on a chain around her neck. My grandmother’s was lost in the sea one day when she was swimming and never replaced, but after Anne died she wore this on her hand until the day she passed. She left it to my mother.”

Sherlock holds up the ring between them and the buttery spring sunshine gilds it, makes the light bounce and sparkle across it’s surface.

“I had it cleaned and resized. I want you to have it.”

“Are you sure you don’t want it? We can have the one I gave you fixed later. I could wear that one…”

“John, be quiet.”

John shuts his mouth.

“Dr. Lee says that all this time I’ve been believing that I chose to see love as human error because of my parents, but he pointed out that I also have an example of true love in my family as well. I want you to wear it. My grandmother could never show anyone who she loved, but I can. I want to honour her and Anne.”

The ring slides onto John’s finger with ease, snugging down into the skin below his knuckle like it had always been there. Like it belonged there.

John brushes the tears from his lashes just as the knock sounds at their door.

“Ready?” John says, smiling up at Sherlock with all his love in his eyes.

His heart in his throat.

 _Thump thump thump_.

Sherlock, his hands steady and sure once more, leans down to kiss him.

Soft.

Sweet.

Love in his touch.

“Ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. 
> 
> It's always a little devastating and exhilarating at the same time to reach the end of a story. It's a time of celebration and grieving almost. To be proud of the accomplishment. To let it go. To put it out there. To give it to you.
> 
> I am so grateful to all of you who went on this journey with me. And for all of you who will come later. I'd love to hear what you think. So if you have a moment, please stop by and say hello. 
> 
> This story would not exist without the encouragement of so many people, including everyone who commented and kudos and were excited at the end of Guilty Secrets for more of this universe. I am sure I will leave out someone but just to name a pivotal few: lawyermargo, GWWG, Violetwylde, Starrla89, cwb, Happierstill, and Hiddenlacuna. You guys helped me through some really dark times this year and I love you all so dearly. Thank you for standing by me. Thank you for betaing. Thank you for cheerleading. Oh look, I'm crying. It's cool. It's cool. Just, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
> 
> Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2018 brings you nothing but good things.
> 
> I penguin track you all.
> 
> <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3


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